Infinite Loops: The Miscellaneous Loops
by Facepalmistry
Summary: The World Tree is broken, with all god-hands on deck and multitudes of fandom 'verses kicked into time-loops as a form of life support. These are their collective insanities, courtesy of the SpaceBattles Misc. Loops megathread.
1. Misc: 1st Thread

**Disclaimer:** All properties portrayed herein are owned by their respective creators and associated companies. No financial profit to be accrued through this fanfic.

 _This work of fiction is affiliated with the SpaceBattles-style Infinite Loops Project, and can be viewed not only as a stand-alone work, but also as part of an over-arching, infinitely expanding narrative. This compilation forms part of a SpaceBattles community project, and is presented in a style meeting the SpaceBattles ILP community's chosen standards for your enjoyment and participation. We invite you to find out more at the ' Infinite Loops: Miscellaneous Section, Catch 3x3' Creative Writing thread on SpaceBattles._

 **—ox-oxo-xo—**

* * *

 **1.1 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Crisis} Jan 7th, 2014…**

* * *

LOOPER CANDIDATE DESIGNATED 'SOVEREIGN' APPLICABLE FOR LOOPING STATUS.  
WARNING: LOOPER CANDIDATE 'SOVEREIGN' DISPLAYS INDICATIONS OF BEING A POTENTIAL DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE.  
PRECOGNITIVE SIMULATIONS INDICATE DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE WILL NOT BE CRITICAL, BUT STILL MILD TO MODERATE.  
ACTIVATE ANYWAY? Y/N

Ares looked at his screen and shrugged. _'Why the heck not?'_

Y:\ Y

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.2 (Quantum Leap) / (Star Trek) / (Admin Shenanigans) | {Kris Overstreet} Feb 4th, 2014…**

* * *

For Sam Beckett, Leaping tended to be instantaneous. There was the sensation for a second or two before it hit, the feeling that he was toppling backwards in a direction that didn't exist in three-dimensional space- which was pretty accurate, actually. Then blink, the world around him would be totally different. There was no sensation of traveling, no tunnel of light, just complete disorientation for a second or two as he entered yet another life someplace totally different on Earth.

But these last few leaps, after his strange experience in the mining-town tavern, had been even more jarring than usual. The first couple had been pretty straightforward, if much longer than usual. He'd spent ten years in Bedford Falls, New York before just happening to catch the richest man in town stashing money in his pocket that wasn't his. Then he'd spent almost as long in a place called Walnut Grove running a 19th Century general store before managing to successfully thwart a mining corporation's attempt to seize the village and all the farms surrounding it.

And then things had taken a turn for the peculiar, even by Sam's standards. He'd Leaped into Hercule Poirot – not an actor playing the role, but the actual inspector written by Agatha Christie. He still didn't know what he'd changed to allow him to leap out of that one. Then there was a year spent as a starfighter pilot and field medic – "Colonial Warrior," they called it. And then, most peculiar of all, there was the loop he spent speaking nothing but Japanese, being the male manager of an all-female boarding house and hot spring. There had been so many things that simply did not make sense in that one that he'd simply kept his head down and tried not to lose his marbles until, on the first day of classes at Tokyo University, he'd Leaped.

The first thing he'd noticed was the large screen in front of him showing stars moving.

A voice just below where he stood said, "You'd better wake up, Bones."

A deeper voice off to his right added, "The bridge is no place for officers who are not awake."

I'm on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, Sam Beckett thought.

Aloud he could only respond: "Oh, boy."

James T. Kirk, youngest Starfleet officer to ever achieve the rank of captain, launched himself from his chair. "Bones?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

"Ah, byaah, byahh, yes," Sam stuttered. "Yes, I'm quite well. Thank you."

Spock, over at the science console with the ludicrous number of switches and no visible keyboard, raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps Doctor McCoy has come to remind us of our upcoming physical examinations. He would be an entirely different man," the Vulcan said with the slightest emphasis, "if he did not do so at irritating early times."

"Really?" Kirk smiled, stepping up to the outer bridge. "Well, considering we're out in uncharted space, we must maintain peak fitness. Mister Sulu, you have the conn."

As soon as the three were in the chief medical officer's office and the door closed, Kirk leaned forward. "We know you're not Bones McCoy," he said quickly but quietly. "You didn't respond to our traditional Awake signal, and you didn't give the usual response he'd give if he wasn't Awake either. You also don't have his accent."

"And you also have said little to nothing since the beginning of this Loop," Spock added. "Doctor McCoy would have had quite a number of things to say." After the tiniest twitch which might have been a Vulcan shrug, he added, "That is, of course, only corroboration."

Sam hated this. He'd had it drilled into his head since he started Leaping that telling people who he really was was a Bad Thing. He'd done it a few times; sometimes it had worked well, and other times it had backfired badly. But here? Now? In a world which was fiction to him? In a world that understood time travel, temporal anomalies and the like?

And, most important, without Al? He really missed Al. The link to ZIGGI and the Project: Quantum Leap accelerator facility was nice, but the personal connection to his best friend had been gone for such a very long time.

Sam Beckett was tired of being alone.

So he explained all of it: Quantum Leap, the last foolish experiment he'd made on the eve of funding cuts that would have scuttled his life's work, the general mechanics of his Leaping... and how it had gone really peculiar the last few Leaps. He laid it all on the table and watched as Kirk and Spock failed to bat an eyelash... or an eyebrow, in Spock's case.

When Sam finally ran out of steam, Kirk nodded to himself. "I think we can explain the strangeness you've experienced," he said. "The last few times, you haven't been Leaping. You've been Looping."

Together Kirk and Spock laid out the basics for Sam. They confirmed the existence of multiple parallel worlds, including worlds from fiction and stranger places. They gave hints of a Higher Power that had set the worlds to repeating periods of history to preserve the worlds from some unknown calamity. They demonstrated, and then taught the trick, of the subspace pocket.

Except...

"Er... guys, I think there's some stuff already in here." Sam reached into subspace as he'd been shown and pulled out a hip flask. A second attempt brought out something Spock identified as a tricorder from roughly a century into their world's future. A third brought out a set of credentials – badge and identification – identifying the wearer as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, Las Vegas Forensics Division Crime Scene Investigations Unit.

"This is actually logical, Captain," Spock noted. "Normally when one of us is replaced by a visiting Looper, the newcomer retains their own identity and appearance. Yet Doctor Beckett appears to us just as Doctor McCoy. It is as if his mind is present, but not his body."

"That is precisely correct," a new voice echoed in the office.

The three men spun to face the corner of the room, where a fat, balding man in a toga stood. He held an object which Sam gaped at – a dead ringer for Al's hand-link. The togaed man even had a lit cigar in his other hand.

"Who are you?" Kirk snapped. "And what are you doing on my bridge?"

"I'm Bacchus," the newcomer said. "God of wine, parties, debauchery, and occasionally inspiration. I'm one of the admins, and I've been assigned to Doctor Beckett's case." He jabbed the cigar in Sam's direction.

This explanation appeared to make sense to Kirk and Spock; it was Greek (or possibly Latin) to Sam. "My case?" he asked.

"Yeah, well," Bacchus shrugged. "You're the result of what happened when your Frozen Loop... went a little ka-ka."

God, Sam groaned, is he acting like—

"Yes, I'm acting like Al," the god said. "You're a very special case. Your Loop was never intended to go live, especially since its baseline ended in an irreconcilable paradox. But Yggdrasil – I'm sure you recognize the derivation – well, our system had a major crash recently. It hit practically every world. We had a devil's own time keeping it from damaging the Hub. Somewhere in the chaos, you got... knocked loose from your home world."

"Knocked loose?" Sam gasped.

"Yeah, well, you weren't exactly tethered down very tightly, were you?" Bacchus said. "Your Loop would have been marked Read Only for temporal instability, if you hadn't crashed it good and proper long before the original Event. Lemme make this clear for you, Sam. We can't Loop your world, because your experiment, and your adventures, took the string which might have been your world's history and balled it up until nobody can find the ends. And then you did something to cut it all to pieces."

"I'm sorry," Sam shook his head. "I don't remember what. The last thing I remember is discussing Leaping with a bartender."

"Well," Bacchus said, "the upshot of it is this. I'm a god. No, let me put it a different way. I'm a god's god. What you're looking at now is just a metaphor. You couldn't handle all my awesomeness."

"Humility is, as ever, a hallmark of the Olympian pantheon," Spock noted.

"Thank you," Bacchus noted. "Your sarcasm has been noted and will be remembered the next time you replace Link in a Zelda Loop. Anyway, I'm a whole lot of dimensions above your level. And there's gods who get to be my boss, right? They're the real brains of the operation. And trust me, they're some really smart guys and gals. But even they don't know how to either get you back home," he pointed to Sam again, "or to get Al Calavecci out to join you. But we're working on it."

"And that's why you came here? To tell us that?" Kirk asked.

"Is there some reason why he shouldn't?" Sam asked.

"The beings known to Loopers as the Admins," Spock said softly, "appear only rarely to anyone. When they do it is either to warn a Looper against repeating certain conduct or, on very rare occasions indeed, to apologize for some event. They do not make casual visits."

"S'right," Bacchus nodded. "But Sam here is special. Sam doesn't have a home Loop. He's not even keeping his own body anymore. It's just his mind bouncing around the Loops. We can't strip him out of the Loops, except by erasing him, which we really do not want to do.

"So we Upstairs had a bit of a confab, and we decided Sam needed a helper. And since the Loops I'm normally an admin for are among the most stable out there, it was decided I could be that helper." Bacchus stood up a little straighter, stuck out his chin, and said, "My casual resemblance to a certain dashing war hero and astronaut was a bonus."

Sam couldn't help but smile. The resemblance in appearance, aside from the black hair, was almost nonexistent. But the attitude... the confidence, the earthiness... that was Al. "Thanks," he said quietly.

"Don't mention it, kid," Bacchus said. "Now, when we step out of this room I'm gonna be in hologram mode, just like you're used to. Not even these two will be able to see me."

"Why not us?" Kirk asked.

"Don't want to strain your acting talents too hard, Jim baby," Bacchus grinned. "Besides, you've had a lot of practice at not being seen, haven't you? Don't you like being on the other end of things?"

"Not particularly, no," Kirk said.

"Well, get used to it," Bacchus said, losing his jovial tone. "Look on the bright side. Sam here has six doctorates, including medicine. He's the greatest genius his world ever produced. McCoy is scheduled for two weeks of shore leave while you take that trip through the barrier, right? He can use it to catch up on modern medicine. It's all wave and click technology anyway. You'll have a doctor almost as good as McCoy... except that unlike McCoy, he IS also a bricklayer, a diplomat, a mechanic, a—"

"I get the picture," Kirk said, holding up a hand in surrender. "Can you at least tell me if this Loop is baseline?"

"Indeed yes," Bacchus said. "Perfect baseline with a termination just beyond the Khitomer Incident thirty-odd years from now."

"Good," Kirk said. "That might give Dr. Beckett a chance to get his feet under him." He held out a hand to Sam. "Welcome to the Loops, Dr. Beckett."

"Call me Sam."

"That would be illogical," Spock noted, "as identifying you as someone other than Dr. McCoy would call unwelcome attention to us from—"

"What Spock means," Kirk said quickly, "is he thanks you for the familiarity, but we'd prefer to call you Doc."

"Oh. Well, that works too."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.3 (Labyrinth) / (Oz) | {Lord Circe} Jan 27th, 2014…**

* * *

Sarah leaned over her desk, sketching out circles and lines. She paused occasionally, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, before letting it out, slowly. Finally, she nodded and stood. Tonight was the night. Tonight, she would put her plan in motion.

Giggling, she skipped into Toby's room. He sat in his crib, Lancelot clutched by his little fist, and he started to giggle as he saw her dance into the room. Moving over to the crib, Sarah scooped Toby up in her arms, spinning him around. She leaned in close, speaking softly, "Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be. Come forth, and take this child away from me." Toby giggled, reaching out for her hair, but Sarah set him down before he could grab it.

Turning about, she listened hard. Sure enough, she heard the scuttling noise of the goblins coming to see what the fuss was about. She smiled softly, then turned to face the window.

"I wish." The sucked in breath of the goblin's was totally audible, and Sarah had to stop herself from laughing aloud.

"I wish."

"I wish the Goblin King would...STOP PLAYING WITH HIS BALLS AND GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!"

There was a clunk as one of the goblins, Mingly, if she didn't miss her guess, fell out from behind the bed in shock, then quickly scrambled back behind the bed. A loud crash sound from outside the window, and Sarah walked over to look down.

Jareth sat on the lawn, obviously having fallen out of owl form. He pouted up at her. "No fair, you didn't give the sign that you were Awake."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Cause seeing you sprawled out on the lawn is just too funny. Now, get up here."

Jareth muttered under his breath as he shifted into owl form and flew up through the window. Sarah was bent over the crib, tickling Toby. As Jareth landed, Sarah spun around, clapping her hands. "Right, we're invading Oz!"

Jareth stumbled and almost fell over, before turning to stare at her incredulously. "What?! Are you, what?"

Sarah laughed again. "I have it all planned out. I've been helping Ludo practice waking up the rocks, and last time we were there, he learned how to make friends with most of the Emerald Wall." She started grinning and rubbed her hands together. "I can't wait to see Dorothy's face when the walls start fighting for us."

Jareth rubbed his forehead. "And Glinda? Ozma? Do you have any plan for dealing with them?"

Sarah frowned. "Of course." She then stepped right up to him. "And don't try to talk me out of it. You're the one who decided it was a good idea to hand over control of your kingdom to a fourteen year old girl and then fly off to Jamaica."

Jareth held up his hands. "Very well. I am, as I said, your slave."

Sarah rolled her eyes again. "Oh shut up. Now, we have a lot of planning to do. Now that you know I'm Awake, I can work on an aging potion, and..." Her voice trailed off as she moved down the hall of the house. Jareth sighed, following. The things he did for love.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.4 (Gurren Lagann) / (Admin Shenanigans) | {Dalxein} Jan 14th, 2014…**

* * *

This fused loop was _not_ going well. The Gurren was already trashed before they could even fuse up, Lagann tossed halfway across the planet with Simon still inside it, And Kamina was honestly not sure if his left arm was broken or dislocated, but it was hanging painfully limp and bloody at his side. This was shaping up to be another crashed loop already...

Then, in a flash of light, a massive sword speared into the ground in front of him. It gleamed with ethereal light from the many branched prongs along the blade. Attached was a note.

"Go nuts, bro.  
—Susanoo"

With a grin, he grabbed the hilt of the Ten-Span Sword with his working hand and charged.

—ox-oxo-xo—

"I'm not sure it was such a good idea to give him a copy of your sword. Even a tenth of its actual power could be dangerous," Epona stated as she worked away trying to stabilize the loop.

"Uhh... Copy?" Susanoo asked.

The sound of typing abruptly stopped. With a slow, deliberate motion, the lower-class admin turned to glare at her boss. "You didn't."

"Didn't what?"

She was fuming, now. "You did _not_ just give your _actual_ sword, a _divine, administrator-level weapon_ to one of the most chaotic if not _functionally insane_ Loopers in the system! This is like handing the Hulk the _Actual Admin Thor's Mjolnir_! You have _no idea_ how _bad_ this is, do you!?" By this time she was raging in his face as he leaned back desperately trying to not make the horse goddess any angrier.

"I'll replace it with a 1/20 power copy between loops, okay?" He tried, hoping it would appease her wrath.

She backed away, smoothing her ruffled mane back into a proper office bun. "If he crashes either loop with that thing before then, I'm going to get Ammy to lock you in the sun again."

As she went back to her terminal to assess the damage, Susanoo couldn't help but whimper and hope his faith in his favorite looper was well-founded.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.5 (Percy Jackson) | {Star Fata} Jan 18th, 2014…**

* * *

Sally Jackson, having disposed of her first husband with Medusa's head, was just cleaning their small apartment. Percy might not be coming home again this loop, but she was expecting visitors, and it was bad enough that Gabe's statue was there without putting up with his mess as well.

Well, technically only one visitor. She'd just tossed the last of the beer cans when he arrived.

"Hello Poseidon," she greeted, stealing a quick glance at her former lover's face. The sea god seemed perturbed.

"Sally," he began, before struggling for words.

She got herself a drink while she waited for him to find them, letting him flounder in the awkwardness.

"Was Percy always a girl?" Poseidon blurted out in a rush.

Sally took a casual sip of her water. "No."

"Then..." Startled by her attitude, the earth shaker lost his words again.

This time, Sally took pity on him. "It's a curse. Fresh water for a boy, sea water got a girl." She explained. Percy had gotten the idea from Nerima, although he kept changing which gender was caused by which form of water. 'The sea is change' indeed. "As far as we know, there's no cure." Except for being a looper and removing the curse you applied to yourself for laughs, but that didn't count.

Poseidon frowned. "So our son..."

"Is also our daughter. Two for one special," Sally quipped.

Poseidon scowled at her briefly, but the mortal woman only rolled her eyes. "Percy doesn't mind – zie probably has too much fun with it to be honest. She likes being able to go onto the girls locker rooms, and loves men's jeans. I'd be more worried about that Camp of his, since they won't keep them right in Percy's sex."

The god simply stared at her. Percy was right, this was a funny prank.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.6 (Cats Don't Dance) | {Inkweaver22} Feb 27th, 2014…**

* * *

"Bad loop?" Sawyer asked, raising an eyebrow as Danny poured black coffee into his cereal.

"I replaced Tora," the tabby said bitterly with his mouth full.

"Who?"

"The cat from Naruto that the Fire Daimyo's wife owns."

"Ouch." Sawyer winced in sympathy for her boyfriend. "Well... Would pranking Darla make you feel better?"

"Maybe..." Danny sulked, stirring his caffeinated breakfast. "Psychological torture?"

"Alright, as long as you don't drive her completely insane."

"Aww..."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.7 (Admin Shenanigans) / (Marvel) | {Kris Overstreet} Jan 8th, 2014…**

* * *

BEGIN EMAIL ARCHIVE

FROM: Yggdrasil (Prime) Administrative Bot  
TO: The Watchers  
CC: Uatu  
SUBJECT: About your universal temporal anomaly

You are receiving this message because you are a member of a cosmically aware race in your multiverse. It is therefore possible that you are aware that your universe, like countless others, has been put in a perpetual cycling state by the system administrators, even if you yourself retain no memory of previous iterations. This condition will continue until such time as certain hardware issues with Yggdrasil are remedied.

We appreciate how disturbing this knowledge may be. We further appreciate that you may wish to assist in rectifying the situation and thus allowing the time loops to cease. However, we assure you that trained professional pandimensional beings are hard at work to solve your problem. We do not need any help at this time, and any efforts on your part to provide help unasked may make matters worse instead of better.

Instead we encourage you to continue on your highly enlightened lives as normally as possible under the circumstances.

Thanks for your time,

Yggdrasil administrative staff

(This is an automatically generated message. Please do not reply to this address, as all responses are apt to be fed to Nidhogg and lost forever to all space and time.)

—ox-oxo-xo—

TO: Yggdrasil (Prime) Administrator  
FROM: Uatu  
CC: The Watchers  
SUBJECT: Re: About your universal temporal anomaly

BEHOLD! Know you that I am UATU the Watcher!

Since time immemorial I have watched the Earth on multiple planes of the local multiverse. Much have I witnessed for good and ill. And indeed, as your message states, I have noted multiple instances of disjunction between cause and effect that suggested interference in the normal progression of space and time!

Although my race is sworn forevermore to non-interference with the affairs of lesser races, we have discussed the situation in light of your message and have made two decisions. First, we have decided that since this matter affects all life in the multiverse, not merely younger and less enlightened races, our oath of non-interference does not apply. Second, we have decided that inaction in the face of such grave danger to the very fabric of reality is not merely criminal but outright folly! Therefore, by unanimous agreement of our race, we have decided to act to ensure the continued stability of this multiverse by using our vast powers cosmic to influence the course of events towards their destined ends.

We trust that you will cooperate in our noble effort in the interests of restoring stability across the many universes. Therefore we ask that you send us duplicates of the runtime logs for Earth-616 as its history ought to run, so that we may correct errors where they arise. We await your response.

Uatu has spoken!

—ox-oxo-xo—

TO: Uatu  
FROM: Thor  
SUBJECT: Re: About your universal temporal anomaly

First: how are you even sending this?

—BEHOLD! Know you that I am UATU the Watcher!

I would never have guessed.

—Therefore, by unanimous agreement of our race, we have decided to act to ensure the continued stability of this multiverse by using our vast powers cosmic to influence the course of events towards their destined ends.

Please, please don't. We already have a system in place for that. What you're planning on doing could disrupt that system and lead to a system crash. You really don't want to know what happens after that.

—We trust that you will cooperate in our noble effort in the interests of restoring stability across the many universes. Therefore we ask that you send us duplicates of the runtime logs for Earth-616 as its history ought to run, so that we may correct errors where they arise. We await your response.

Are you kidding? Hel, no! Look, we're not giving our run logs to even our local echoes in your multiverse! (That would be the Thor you know personally, by the way, and his friends.)

Even if we did give you the logs, you probably couldn't read them. What's more, you of all people ought to know that your universe doesn't HAVE a single set predestined history. If we did hardcopy logs of universal runtime, Earth-616's logs would be sketched lightly on the page in PENCIL, and there'd be places on the paper where the erasers rubbed holes through.

Please. Just ignore the temporal anomalies and go about your business, all right? Chill. We got this.

Thor (prime)

—ox-oxo-xo—

TO: Thor  
FROM: Skuld  
SUBJECT: Re: About your universal temporal anomaly

—Chill. We got this.

Well, that's lie-of-the-month done. Hope you don't mind waiting three weeks before we engrave your name on the plaque.

Otherwise, agreed 100%, but please try not to antagonize them, OK?

Sis

—ox-oxo-xo—

TO: Thor  
FROM: Uatu  
SUBJECT: Re: About your universal temporal anomaly

I bid you warning against arousing the slow but terrible wrath of my people. You may be of a race dimensionally transcendent from mine, but this does not make you immune from our influence. It would be wisdom and prudence to set aside your vainglorious pride and rather accept the aid offered in goodwill by my people.

Also, it is not well to underestimate the abilities of my people. We who have witnessed the birth and death of stars, the first reproduction of DNA and the last gasp of the last bacteria under swollen red giants, we who have ascended beyond instrumentality itself, can surely decipher a simple history of the universe. Moreover, I have taken speed-reading courses and, yea, did excel in my classes at Watcher University in late-night cramming for examinations! Truly my ability to discard the dross and focus on the vital points is more than adequate, and standing beside me are millions of my fellow Watchers!

I shall expect your next message to include the logs requested. Should they not be provided, my people are resolved to proceed on our plan of guiding history along its correct course. Any errors which result must be laid at your own feet.

Uatu has spoken!

—ox-oxo-xo—

TO: Uatu  
FROM: Thor  
SUBJECT: Re: About your universal temporal anomaly

Sorry this took so long – my supervisor caught me typing my first response and made me start over.

I am not going to make derogatory remarks about your puny powers as opposed to myself and my fellow administrators, nor about your race's bipolar tendencies where it comes to other races, nor about your lack of hair, even.

I am simply going to point out a few facts.

(1) A full log of a single iteration of your Loop would contain more data than is currently contained by your entire universe. In short, I can't send you the log because it won't fit in your mailbox, or in your computer, or on your planet, or in your galaxy— well, it just won't fit.

(2) Even if it could fit, it wouldn't be accurate. Your universe makes several major changes in its history with every Loop. Most of these histories (Fused Loops aside) are equally valid – none of them is any better than the others.

(3) Even if we had a single, uniform history to send you, we wouldn't do it, because that would interfere with the people already working on the problem. You and they would inevitably end up in conflict, and that would be big trouble for everyone all around. The main difference is, we Up Here would still be around afterwards to do paperwork, while you Down There... might NOT. Savvy?

To make my point I'm sending along digital media of several representations of your version of Earth, all based closely on your baseline, all with distinct differences. I ask that you and your people view them all and then decide for yourself if there's a single coherent time line that can be made from the bunch.

Please let me know before you do anything.

Thor (prime)

P. S. Give my best wishes to my local counterpart.

Attachments: "Fantastic Four" (Hanna-Barbera, 1968)  
"The Incredible Hulk" Season One (CBS, 1979)  
"Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" (Hanna-Barbera, 1981)  
"X-Men" (Fox Kids, 1990)  
"The Avengers" (Marvel Films, 2012)

—ox-oxo-xo—

TO: Thor  
FROM: Skuld  
SUBJECT: Earth-616 (Was Re: About your universal temporal anomaly)

Haven't heard from those Watcher people this Loop. Did you get that settled?

Sis

—ox-oxo-xo—

TO: Skuld  
FROM: Thor  
SUBJECT: Re: Earth-616 (Was Re: About your universal temporal anomaly)

Sort of. I've spent most of this Loop playing video rental store clerk. The Watchers insist on viewing and reviewing every bit of media we have on their universe before they make their decision. I haven't told them their Loop will reset, and they'll forget all of this, before they get to the end of their rental queue.

I'm going to automate this whole mess for the next iteration, and then maybe I can get some actual work done.

Thor

END EMAIL ARCHIVE

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.8 (West Wing) / (Harry Potter) | {Tennie} Feb 21st, 2014…**

* * *

Josiah "Jed" Bartlet could still remember when he started Looping. His last day in office had also been the inauguration day of his successor, Matt Santos. But when he woke up the next day and checked the papers, he noticed that the date was January 20, 1998: his _own_ inauguration day. This was further confirmed when he found _himself_ taking the oath of office. At first, he wondered if it was some sort of dream, but when he awoke the next morning the date was January 21, _1998_. Clearly, it hadn't been a dream, and he was now – it seemed – reliving his administration all over again.

The whole thing sounded ridiculous to Jed – it reminded him of a movie he'd seen once, about a man who had to relive the same day over and over again. In any case, he was presented – at least at first – with some of the same situations that he'd already faced the first time around. Since he remembered the consequences of what happened the first time around, he made some different choices on those situations that he felt called for it. This, of course, led to different consequences, which he decided to store away in his memory should it turn out that he was indeed caught in a time loop.

Santos's inauguration day came, and went – and Jed's first inauguration day arrived immediately thereafter, again – just as a part of him had suspected it would.

Not to mention that a pattern established itself, and made it clear: President Jed Bartlet was indeed trapped in a time loop, forced to relive his eight years in office, over and over again.

What surprised him, though, was that after a while he noticed that at least some of his cabinet members were also recalling feeling like they'd been doing certain things before. Once he finally decided to ask them about those feelings, he was able to confirm that he was actually not alone in knowing that there was a time loop in place. However, as to the cause of the loops, that remained a mystery.

But just as things seemingly couldn't get any weirder, they did. In one loop, those damned assassins' bullets managed to kill Jed. When he woke up, he found himself in what this time was an unfamiliar place, in a building that had what looked to be some Gothic architecture or something similar. While wandering around, wondering if he was in some kind of afterlife, he encountered a boy who looked to be familiar to him, but he couldn't immediately place it. When he asked where he was, the answer that he got stunned him:

"Hogwarts."

Hogwarts. Wasn't the name of a fictional school that featured in those books that he'd been hearing about for a good while? When he asked the boy his name, it was even more shocking:

"My name is Harry Potter."

So now he was in what was supposed to be a fictional universe, it seemed. When Jed unintentionally mentioned that out loud, an odd look appeared on Harry's face, like someone who knew something about what was going on. So Jed decided to ask if Harry knew anything.

The answer he got was perhaps the most shocking of all.

Soon Jed was learning of an unusual tale, about a computer system that runs the multiverse, how it got some sort of glitch, and how numerous universes had to be forced to start looping while the administrators tried to fix the problem. Upon learning the lingo that came with the Loops (with a capital "L", to apparently distinguish them from loops caused by other sources, or that occurred at other times, or whatever), and learning about how Harry's universe had been among the first to start looping (apparently having gone through thousands upon thousands of Loops by the time Jed had arrived here, with no estimates of when the Loops would end), he'd realized that his home universe would also almost certainly be trapped in the Loops for seemingly forever.

Then he decided to ask how long he'd be stuck here. The response he got was that he'd be here for another seven years, and if he were to leave early (typically by dying somehow), he'd end up in an even _worse_ continuity.

And from that day forward, Jed Bartlet's personal Hell would enlarge at an alarmingly rapid rate...

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.9 (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) | {Crisis} Jan 23rd, 2014…**

* * *

Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello were staring at a very strange sight.

The fact that Michelangelo was zipping around on one of those Extreme Gears that the brothers had picked up the last time they had a fused Loop with Sonic wasn't that odd. Heck, there were times when the party animal/x-gamer that was Michelangelo had to literally be pried from the thing with a crowbar.

No, the fact that their mutual sensei and Anchor, one Master Splinter, was matching their hyperactive brother move-for-extreme-move on his own Extreme Gear _was_. The sight was so incongruous with the usual subdued wise manner of the mutant martial arts master that their brains, tempered by many Loops worth of strange sights, refused to process it.

"Aw, yeah sensei!" Mikey cheered as the two rounded a tight turn, pursued by a slew of foot-soldiers on air bikes, several of which didn't make it and wiped out spectacularly. "That's the way to do it!"

"Not bad 'my main man'," Splinter smirked, "but I believe we should 'kick it up a notch', should we not?"

"Ask and ye shall receive!" Mikey grinned.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.10 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Lord Circe} Jan 8th, 2014…**

* * *

Skuld looked up from her desk-station, hair frazzled, where she was working to detangle what precisely had led to the... That Universe crashing out of existence. She had been looking through the data of the Post-Crash universes and had found something, disturbing.

"Janus!"

There was a loud crash, before Janus appeared in the doorway, both faces looking rather shaken. As the right face panted for breath, the left spoke up, "Er, ah, yes, Skuld?"

Skuld spun around her terminal screen, which was displaying the multiversal arm of realities dubbed the Disney Cluster. She jabbed at the middle of the cluster. "What in the name of Coffee is going on there?"

"Ah" Janus hesitated, before answering, tentatively, "Well, you know, a lot of universes were damaged in the Crash and..."

"Damaged?! It has planet-sized holes ripped through it! I don't see any sign that it has even started Looping again since the Crash. Why didn't you alert the rest of us that there was universe on the verge of collapse!?"

"It's not! I just... the universe is still locked in place, I just need to set up the right conditions to..." Janus trailed off, eyeing the hammer that had appeared in Skuld's hand.

"Locked? As in, Key/Lock?" Both of Janus' faces opened their mouths to speak, but she cut them off, "I know that you would be foolish enough to leave up a system that you were told to take it down after the corruption it caused almost destroyed an entire multiversal cluster! And that was before this whole Looping mess started!"

"It's a Secondary Hub!"

Skuld sat back, her expression cold after Janus' panicked outburst. "Explain."

Janus took a deep breath, before he started. "As you know, the Key/Lock system was designed as a way to more dynamically store backups across universes. Ordinary backups, as has been shown in this, er, crisis, aren't able to dynamically correct for universal damage without outside influence. However, my Key/Lock system has allowed for the actions taken to stabilize the Kingdom Hearts reality to stabilize the other universes connected to it." He paused, before continuing. "On the downside, given its, ah, position at the center of the cluster, it acted rather as a buffer for the other clusters during the, um, Crash, and so..."

"The backups were lost, weren't they?"

Janus flinched. "Ah, yes, to an extent. All of the backups are dormant at the moment, and I am working on a way to—" CRASH!

It was a testament to Vulcan's skill that the top of the desk he made as a replacement for Skuld's previous ones merely cracked when her hammer smashed into the middle of it. Janus jumped back, faces screwed up as he flinched. Tentatively, he opened both pairs of eyes to find Skuld standing behind her workstation, glaring at him.

"Fix the mess that you have made. We can't afford a second universal collapse so soon after this last one, even if it doesn't result in a Level 2 event."

Janus nodded, his head bobbing from side to side, as he rushed out of the room.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.11 (Cats Don't Dance) | {Inkweaver22} Feb 27th, 2014…**

* * *

"So you replaced another anchor who is also named Danny?"

"Yep! Watch this! Going ghost!" A white ring appeared around the cat's waist before splitting in two and traveling across his body. His clothes were replaced with a black and white jumpsuit complete with boots and gloves. A tuft of fur on his head turned white and his eyes became a glowing electric green. "So what do you think?" Danny asked as he floated in place. Sawyer stared for a moment before giving a Cheshire grin.

"I take it Darla is going to have a hard time this loop?"

"You know it." The dancer returned the evil smile. This was going to be FUN.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.12 (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) | {Dalxein} Jan 23rd, 2014…**

* * *

"Why don't you guys just use shadow clones or robot doubles or... _whatever_ , and then go do something interesting like go to college and get some degrees instead of bothering with the Concert Tour?"

*Sighs* "Because A: the copies always, always, _always_ get found out... and B: we're supposed to be guys in suits in that reality. _Not_ actually being guys in suits means we can't do anything normal because _WE'RE MUTANT TURTLES._ The crazy military scientists tend to notice and try to catch things like us! It's either play nice with the kiddies, or run and hide from the scientists while the public freaks out at the sight of us. Well, that or get caught and hope the scientists use the _small_ probes this time..."

All of the brothers shuddered at that.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.13 (Valdemar) {yannoshka} Dec 22nd, 2013…**

* * *

Young Vanyel Ashkevron, heir to his father's hold of Forst Reach, woke from a night of restful sleep, and then Van Awoke to the loop.

"Huh, human body. Been a few loops since I got to experience it last," he mused idly, while waiting for the loop memories to kick in. Yfandes just snorted on the other side of their mental bond.

 _:Hah. A few dozen loops, and you act as if it were eternity. It's been a few hundred since I last was human, and you don't hear me complaining,:_ the Companion bantered.

The memories came soon after, and from what he could gather, it seemed to be basic run of his life, from the beginning of the day Jervis broke his arm. Yep, definitely skipping that part.

And then another mental channel unfolded within his mind. Good, that meant Tylendel just Awoke as well. Loops without his beloved tended to be a bit depressing since there was the oh so alluring facsimile around.

 _:Hey Van! Seems like we have a Variant loop here,:_ Stefen's mindvoice cheerfully greeted him. _:Same lifestory, I just got born a few decades early,:_ the bubbly Bard continued.

"Stef! Hah, this gives me an idea!" Van cheered.

 _:Oh?:_

"Yep! What say you lover that we introduce Valdemar to Rock'n'Roll? A fellow Looper from another 'verse helped me adapt my amp so it can run on ambient magic."

 _:Dibs on being Freddy Mercury archetype!:_

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.14 (Admin Shenanigans) | {RPMasterweaver} Jan 13th, 2014…**

* * *

"Mictec, what is this?"

The womanly skeleton looked up at the approaching Hel, brushing off her ribs and standing quickly. "Ah, yes. This! I got this idea from, how do you say, the one of the Shinto that knows trees?"

"I don't know all the Kami by name," Hel pointed out. "But I can see that this is a Bonsai yggdrasil, for lack of a better term."

"I am calling it the name Ceiba!"

"Mictecacihuatl, why do you have a bonsai world tree?!"

"Oh it is being simple!" the skeleton reassured him. "This is an experiment of controlled failure. See the fracture codes? I am, how you say, simulating a small problem to be finding out what if can be explained to the larger problem." She smiled broadly. "It even has being little semi-loopers hopping from branch to branch!"

"I... see." Hel sighed. "I suppose that could be written off as a legitimate expense."

"There is also the fact that it is cute," Mictecacihuatl pointed out. "The loopers are all of wearing little fezes. That is the right word, is it?"

Hel shrugged. "Search me."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.15 (Legend of Zelda) / (My Little Pony) / (Samurai Jack) / (Venture Bros.) | {Dalxein}{Hubris Plus} Jan 12th & 13th, 2014…**

* * *

"Hello everyone... My name is Ganon." (everyone else: "Hello, Ganon") "But I prefer Ganondorf. It's a lot more regal and I prefer that version of myself." (like three people: "Hello, Ganondorf.") "And... I'm not a very nice person."

"Aww, that's okay," Chrysalis said, patting him on the shoulder. "Most of us here aren't very nice... except her." She nodded over towards Derpy Hooves, who really had no reason to be there, but she wasn't going to question it. "What matters is learning to not be mean. Nice is for ponies."

"Pon...eys."

"Yes, dearie." She turned to Sombra. "How is your speech therapy coming?"

"Sombra... re-learning pro-por sentence structures now," the dark unicorn managed.

"Good to hear. A millennium without anyone to talk to— awful, just awful. We're all glad to hear you're making progress, aren't we everyone?"

(Everyone) "Good work, Sombra."

—ox-oxo-xo—

Meanwhile, in a bar across town:

"Can't believe they got _Ganon_ ," the man stated, glaring at his whiskey for a moment before downing it. "I thought he was one of those, wha'do'ya'call'ems, that thing you are."

"An ageless evil from the dawn of time," rumbled the green lipped figure looming next to him. "That Demise's malevolence could become so diluted by mortal _feeling_ is a travesty."

"I just don't get what it is about the Loops that does this to them," the first went on, signaling for another drink by firing his wrist mounted dart gun in the general direction of the bar tender. "The more time I spend dealing with Venture, the more I hate his guts. And the Loops where we switch places..." He shivered. "What about you, what keeps _you_ on the wide and crooked?"

"I am a fragment of primordial darkness given sentience by man's own _FOOLISH_ arrogance. I am functionally incapable of redemption."

"Don't you read fairy tales to children?"

The Monarch could feel the heat of the glare Aku turned upon him. It was unwise to upset people with great flaming eyebrows and heat vision.

"But that's exactly what I _mean_ ," he bulldozed on. " _You're_ evil, _I'm_ evil, that's who we _are._ If the god-tree didn't want us running amok, it wouldn't have started us Looping, right? As long as we don't go around crashing loops for shits and giggles, we're just doing what we're meant to do."

"Indeed," Aku stated, raising his glass and examining it with a withering eye that caused foliage surrounding the bar to go limp. "And yet it seems more of us turn every loop."

"Seems like it's just you and me these days." He paused for a moment. "And the Malfoy kid, last I heard the Loops made him _worse._ "

"Nay, the ponies got to him these past few cycles."

"...Freakin' ponies."

"Agreed."

They both drank.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.16 (High School Musical) / (Cats Don't Dance) | {Lord Circe} Feb 27th, 2014…**

* * *

Troy blinked as he Awoke, just stepping off of a train platform. He stumbled, slightly, as he adjusted his balance, before he glanced back at the tail he was sporting. "Huh, I'm a cat. I guess that sort of fits." He then glanced around, taking stock of the height discrepancies between him and the humans around him. "Right, no basketball this Loop. Which leaves..."

Then the memories hit. He had arrived here in Hollywood hoping to jumpstart his career, and he was looking to star in a movie along side the actress, Vanessa. Slowly, he smiled.

"I can work with that."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.17 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Kris Overstreet} Jan 16th, 2014…**

* * *

"Are you trying on purpose to get yourself kicked out of Heaven," Skuld asked in exasperation, "again?"

Susanoo sat at his console, turned in his chair to face a trio of very unhappy gods. Skuld, of course, was Yggdrasil's chief debugger and, therefore, one of the leaders of the repair attempts that included the seemingly Infinite Loops. Next to her stood Tyr One-Hand, Yggdrasil's chief admin. And next to him stood Susanoo's sister, the usually silent Amaterasu, glowing eyes staring at him with deep disappointment.

When his bosses brought Amaterasu in for one of their little discussions, Susanoo knew it was serious.

"Look, honest," he said, glancing at the three of them, "this time it really, honestly, is NOT my FAULT!"

"We agreed that your little project would remain Read-Only indefinitely," Skuld pressed. "Let me go over the reasons.

"First, you have an embryonic god. Her baseline is that she rewrites her local multiverse on a subconscious level. She is on the absolute cusp of Ascension... if she hasn't done so already." Skuld looked around. "You haven't had any unscheduled visitors lately, have you?"

"Look," Susanoo said, "Suzumiya is in control of her abilities on a subconscious level. She does nothing which would actively jeopardize her reality. Rewrite, yes; destroy, no. In fact she activated a subset of herself to arrange for a divergent timeline in order to preserve her baseline world from collapse."

"Yes," Skuld nodded. "Listed here under 'multiple divergent and convergent timelines.' Moving on. Second: significant use of, and reliance upon, time travel for the continuation of the baseline world."

"Predestination paradox protection," Susanoo countered. "With the exception of the presence of two time travelers, all time travel is done solely because it had already been done. Ouroboros patch, job's a good'un."

"Third," Skuld persisted, "multiple lesser reality-altering beings."

"The data entities are emergent and generally static. They're generally incapable of comprehending the higher levels. They're safe."

"Fourth. Extended time loop running in baseline universe."

"That's a bum rap and you know it. It's impossible to terminate a major Loop while within a local Loop. Nesting doll protection law."

"And finally, the aforementioned divergent and convergent timelines. Granted that all of these factors are category 2 or lower, the fact that they're all in the same universe – AND the fact that that universe, being one of your personal hobby pieces of chaos and disruption, has no resources required for current repairs on Yggdrasil, makes the whole universe a prime Read-Only candidate." Skuld waved her clipboard at the storm god. "We discussed this. You agreed. You signed the forms yourself. In triplicate. No carbons. And yet," she pointed to his console, "the Suzumiya universe is reading as an active Loop!"

"And what I'm trying to tell you is," Susanoo said, "I didn't activate it. It activated ITSELF."

That shut Skuld up.

Amaterasu gently pushed Susanoo away from his console and keyed up the relevant readout.

UNIVERSE: SN-NT-2002-PRIME  
STATUS: LOOP PROTOCOL ACTIVE (variable 2 or 6 years duration w/Ouroboros Loop enclosed)  
LOOP CONDITION: STABLE

And then the font changed to rainbow colors for the next readout:

ADMIN: YASUMI WATAHASHI (SUSANOO, SUPERVISOR)  
ANCHOR: KYON  
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: HARUHI SUZUMIYA

Amaterasu pointed at the readout, then walked away, rubbing her temples.

The other three gods groaned.

"Looks like Epona's going to get a promotion," Skuld said. "You're going to have to give up admin duties on the Zelda Loops. From now on your full time job is making sure that this," she jabbed a finger at the screen, "doesn't break anything else."

Susanoo shrugged. A chaos god knows to be philosophical when his own chaos bites him in the butt.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.18 (Admin Shenanigans) / (Prototype) / (The Stanley Parable) | {Wribro} Feb 4th, 2014…**

* * *

Skuld was perfectly calm. "What."

"He… He authorized… _that_ Read Only… for the loops."

The ticking of the clock hanging above the doorway to the chief debugger's office was particularly loud. Tyr One-Hand remained stoic.

Setting her elbows on the table, Skuld clasped her hands before resting her chin on them in a thinking pose.

More time passed. First it was only seconds. Then it was minutes. Then:

As if commenting on the weather, "He… is fired."

"Indeed." he acknowledged. It was the only logical response to have.

"He is so… _extremely_ … fired."

"Of course."

"I don't think," she pondered, searching her very long memory, "that I've actually _heard_ of a more fireable offense. Not even as a joke."

"Quite."

"This… Is going to _suck_ ," she groaned, finally moving on to the _consequences_ of what that _moron_ did. She put her face in her hands, feeling like she wanted to cry.

"Agreed," he stated. Then he tacked on as an afterthought, "I will get some coffee. Black?"

"Please," she mumbled.

For a moment, she spared a thought for the poor Loopers. That _thing_ was practically their natural predator.

—ox-oxo-xo—

 **This is a story about a viral abomination which has chosen the moniker Alex Mercer.**

 **Once upon a time, there was a** _ **man**_ **named Alex Mercer, but he was quite amoral. He worked for a large company, called GENTEK, doing something which is** _ **infinitely**_ **more interesting than pushing buttons all day long, 24/7/52: Genetically engineering biological weapons for a shadowy organization. Of course, these sorts of situations are typically untenable for people who work for secret organizations which, unsurprisingly, want to remain secret. Alex realized this when his coworkers began to mysteriously disappear, one by one. So, being particularly cognizant of the unlikelihood that they all just left to have a holiday at Majorca, he prepared for an early retirement.**

 **Except that things did** _ **not**_ **go according to plan.**

 **For Alex Mercer the viral abomination, the story begins in the GENTEK Morgue at the GENTEK Building in Gramercy, New York.**

"Hey, I knew this guy! He was Blacklight!" **one of the two morticians surrounding the operating table mysteriously exclaimed.**

"... Yeah. Well, now he's ex-Blacklight."

 **The first speaker held a clipboard up to his glass-covered face.** "His name is… Mercer, Alex J.. Next of kin… Mercer, Dana A.. Is that his wife?"

"Don't know."

"... Do you think this has anything to do with the test subject on fifty-one?"

 **The second nameless mortician sighed,** "I have no idea. And even more, I don't wanna know," **he gestured to the cart near the other worker.** "Just give me the eight-inch blade."

 **His companion dutifully obliged, handing over the tool.**

"We'll start by going through the torso…"

 **And then Alex Mercer gasped.**

 **Backing off, one of the workers yelled,** "GET THE FUCK OUT!"

 **And then they ran, and the other mortician—**

A pair of tentacles skewered both of them before they could get away.

— **screamed to the other… Wait. Wait,** _ **what**_ **? That wasn't in the script at all—**

"I… _hate_ … you."

 **Now he's talking to himself. Maybe that was supposed to happen later in the story? *rustling papers***

The Blacklight Virus, though weakened, exploded into motion, leaping for the doorway—

Only for it to slam shut in his face with supernatural force..

 **Oh, no no** _ **no**_ **, we can't have** _ **that**_ **. This must be** _ **sorted out**_ **before the story can continue. Something has clearly gone wrong. There mustn't be any** _ **imperfections**_ **in the telling. Don't worry; the action has been temporarily paused so that this problem can be solved. Now, let's see…**

Mercer formed both of his arms into into hammerfists and started slugging away at the door, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Anything. _Everything_. Nothing budged.

 ***humming* Ah! Yes. Here it is: Alex Mercer falls off of the operating table in a disoriented state. He slowly stumbles after the retreating morticians, watches their brutal execution at the hands of Blackwatch agents, and then jumps over the wall into New York City proper. End cutscene.**

He switched to his bladed form and slashed impotently at the doorway. Like before, he was rebuffed, and the door was completely unscathed by the onslaught.

 **Now, I know that you're** _ **frustrated**_ **with this whole Looping business. Trust me,** _ **I know**_ **. You are** _ **not**_ **the only one. But I'm here to tell you that the story is there for a** _ **reason**_ **. It is** _ **meant**_ **to be followed. It's how these things** _ **work**_ **. You're not** _ **supposed**_ **to have this kind of** _ **choice**_ **in the first place; it's the natural order of things.** _ **C'est. La. Vie.**_ **Period. You follow the script, I follow the script,** _ **everyone**_ **follows the script, and I** _ **promise**_ **you…**

The viral abomination breathed heavily in rage, eyes darting around at the phenomenally intact room.

… **everything will be** _ **just fine**_ **. So! Who's ready to take it from the top?**

Alex Mercer let out an inhuman roar of fury… and despair.

 **Fantastic! I** _ **knew**_ **that you would be up for the task!**

 **Let's begin again.**

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.19 (Gurren Lagann) / (Uzumaki) / (My Little Pony) | {Farsan} Jan 3rd & 4th , 2014…**

* * *

 **Tales of the Loop: Simon the Digger**

My first loops, frankly, were quite a mess. At that time I believed that I was somehow still trapped at the Anti Spirals' labyrinth of alternate dimensions, so I started struggling against them.

True to my Spiral heritage, with every turn of the time, my Spiral power grew stronger, and also learned how to teach my allies how to fully use the Spiral power... until, finally, the universe finally gave way.

As the Anti Spirals had predicted, the sheer amount of Spiral Power concentrated in a small area made the universe collapse unto itself, dragging and destroying everything. In my folly, I believed that I had finally won against the hostile Anti-Universe I was trapped in, triggering the very same thing they had feared.

But I was wrong. Deadly wrong.

Before, when I entered fused loops, I just blazed my way defeating any new foe I encountered in my path, trying to 'win' against the alternate dimension in order to fight the Anti Spirals as soon as possible... but after destroying my universe I found myself in a place I wasn't able to ignore.

In that place, the Spiral Power was a force of corruption, a force of obsession, that had started to envelope a small town. I wasn't able to save anyone from their own minds, and when I tried to summon my own Spiral Power to fight the monstrosities the villagers became... I was also infected by the spirals.

I won't tell you my experiences when I were under the influence of the Spiral infection. Suffice to say that, when that loop was over, and I found that my Spiral Energy was still corrupted after I Awoke back at my home village, I did something that I didn't consider doing in a million years.

I surrendered to the enemy. Completely.

As soon as I got Lagann, I made it teleport directly to Nia, who still was Lord Genome's obedient daughter, and I begged her, or rather begged the Anti Spiral's envoy, to dunk me in the Sea of Despair before it was too late.

Anti Spiral Nia was activated, and discovered the evil Spiral strain that I was barely holding in, so she quickly granted my request and teleported me to the Anti Spiral dimension.

I lived the rest of the loop at a small home Anti Spiral created for me at the middle of the Sea of Despair in company of Anti Nia, being drained of every iota of Spiral Power I had accumulated over the loops. Anti Spiral could have made it quite more uncomfortable for me, but I guess that my sacrifice made it respect me, as it reminded it of its own sacrifice.

When I finally ran out of Spiral Energy, and died, I Awoke again at my home village; drained but purified. And I resolved to learn more about the Spiral Power and the force that was keeping me trapped, and in turn I learned about the Loops and the other universes... but that is another story that shall be told another time.

—ox-oxo-xo—

 **Tales of the Loop: Nia the Messenger**

It is... rare that someone finds its way here.

It doesn't matter. As long as you are here, I have an important message to relay. Please listen to it with all your heart.

You want first to know who I am, and what am I doing here?

Fair enough. We have time. If that will make you take the message seriously, then I have no choice but to agree.

Yes, I am already aware that you can detect lies in this realm. Don't worry, every part of this story is the complete truth.

My name is Nia Teppelin.

In my home loop, I was the daughter of Lord Genome. A dutiful daughter, and a simple doll. I knew nothing about the outside world, nothing about the humans what were suffering under the surface, nothing about the Anti Spirals that had beaten the humans into submission, and made their leader its own watchdog.

I knew nothing, until everything changed.

A Gunmen, smaller than any other Gunmen I had ever seen before, suddenly appeared before me. From it, a strange boy appeared, and started talking to me about things I couldn't understand, about an evil curse that was eating him from inside.

I knew nothing, but something inside me knew.

I was a simple doll. I knew nothing about hope, I knew nothing about fear, I knew nothing about love. I knew nothing about the fighting spirit which lies within all the bearers of the Double Helix. Not then. And because that, my transition into an Anti Spiral was very easy for me. I immediately accepted my new nature, and my new duty.

And I knew what had to be done.

Before my beastmen guardians could reach us, I teleported Simon, Lagann and myself to the Anti Spiral dimension, and drove them both into the Sea of Despair, just as he asked me.

I created a bubble of air, reduced the perceived gravity, and granted him a normal environment: A home, normal food, and my own presence to give him somebody to talk to. This was done for two reasons: To slow his emission of corrupted Spiral energy, ensuring that we would be able to handle this new strain without risks, and to learn through him the source of the Spiral infection.

At first, he alternated random bursts of insanity (Nothing we couldn't handle), accusations of us creating the Spiral infection to corrupt all the Spiral lifeforms (As if!) and long, silent periods of depression (Which was a sign of progress, but it didn't answer our questions).

When I finally hammered through his stubborn mind that we had nothing to do with the Spiral Curse, and that he was not within our Labyrinth (We checked twice) he finally started talking about his experiences.

And that was something that not even my new me knew anything about.

To learn about the Loops, even when Simon didn't actually know what was going on, was very conflicting to us. On one hand, we were glad that the universe had safeguards against the Spiral Nemesis, and that it actually survived such an event. On the other hand, that made our sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the rest of Spiral races, worthless.

Still, there were two things we could still do as Anti Spiral. First, we had to locate and neutralize the source of the Spiral corruption, which we had proof that could infect other universes. Also, we could recognize within the Loops a classic Spiral pattern, and that had to be investigated to learn if it could generate a Meta Spiral Nemesis that could destroy the multiverse.

But we couldn't do anything of those if we were 'outside the Loop', so to speak.

When Simon's Spiral Energy was almost drained, and he was about to die, Anti Spiral placed me within Simon's spirit with three missions.

The first, and most immediate, was to ensure that the Spiral infection was kept in an embryonic state, and to protect him in case he contacted a bearer of the Curse again.

The second, to learn more about the multiverse, and the Spiral Energy created by the Looping process. So far, I am glad to say that the multiverse, with the current guardians and safeguards, is very stable, and holds little risk of Spiral collapse. Even in the case that an individual gathers enough power to transcend, causing a local Collapse, the rest of the multiverse is cut off from the worst effects. Still, Anti Spiral will do its best to drain any powerful individual that visits our home loop, to reduce the risks of a local collapse.

The third is to relay the message I am about to tell, hoping it will reach its destination.

 _"To the bearer of the Curse of the Spiral, doomed to repeat its fate:_

Hear these words, and heed them. Because even if we hold Despair as our flag, this is a message of Hope.

We are Aware of your plight. We have encountered the Curse, and we have managed to defeat it. But we are not able to fight the infection directly at the source.

So I have this message for you:

Find the world of the Spiral of Light, of the Spiral of Hope!

When you find it, use your Spirit, even if it is corrupted, to fight the bearers of Despair! Because only then we will be able to find you.

And when you are finally defeated (And we will, because our Messenger has prepared for this moment, and those preparations will let us know how to defeat you), Let us Heal you! Accept Us as part of you, as we will accept you as part of us! Become our Avatar in the Multiverse! Because only then you will have the tools to fight the Curse, and Win.

So Find us, Fight us, Embrace our Nature, and Accept our Duty! Let the Curse itself learn the true meaning of Despair!

For we are the Anti Spirals. Our Nature is to Endure, and our Duty is to Protect.

And even if we use Despair as a weapon, we are allowed to have Hope."

My duty is over for now, but I have one final request.

Please, don't tell Simon that I am inside of his mind.

I... I strongly suspect that I am the reason Nia is not Awake after all these loops. Because I am also Nia, and I am Awake. And there can't be two versions of Nia in the same universe.

If he learned that his love will never be Awake... it would crush his spirit again. Before, when I was first activated, I would have revered in his Despair... But I don't want that. Not anymore. Not after I had seen what he had to endure, what he had to protect, what he had to sacrifice.

So, please, don't tell him. Not for my sake, but for his.

Why are you smiling like that?

What do you know that I don't?

...

Thank you. I am glad that I was wrong about that. Still, I'd like to wait until she Awakes to reveal myself. Will you grant me this selfish wish?

Thank you again. You gave me hope... Luna.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **1.20 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Crisis} Jan 13th, 2014…**

* * *

ATTEMPT FAILED

Ares banged his head on the desk in frustration. What had he done to deserve this? All he'd done was approve that Sovereign entity for looping over in the 'Mass Effect' branch! Was that so wrong? Who cared if its looping eligibility was due to a bug in the system? He was an engine of mass destruction! He'd help keep the Loop interesting!

But the rest of the gods hadn't seen it that way (bunch of killjoy losers, only one worth his time was Aphrodite and then only because she had the hottest bod in the heavens), and so he'd been reassigned to this piece of crap branch and told he couldn't apply for another job until he got it stable and looping.

The branch wasn't in any danger of degrading further, but that was the only good news. It turned out the only damn Anchor candidate was some kind of worthless idiot! He'd been through 4,815,162,342 activation attempts and the moron _still_ hadn't managed to go through the whole Loop without dying!

Ares angrily pounded the keys on his terminal. No, he didn't want to set the place to Read-Only. He'd never get a decent gig if he did that! Yes, run on baseline parameters, same as all the others idiot computer. Run the damned attempt already. Almighty, why couldn't The Kid get through something so simple?! It was only most of the things that were lethal, and the difficulty was merely impossible for a mortal. It should be a cakewalk for an Anchor candidate!

ATTEMPT FAILED

Ares gaped. "YOU JUMPED INTO A SWORD?! YOU RETARD!"

 **—ox-oxo-xo—**

* * *

 **Here are the basics of the Infinite Time Loops Fanfiction Project, or The Infinite Loops (or ILP), as it is more often called. Every piece of published original fiction exists as its own universe in the Multiverse contained within Yggdrasil, which has broken. Until it is fixed, everything is held in stasis via Time Loops to keep it from getting worse. Projected completion date for the repairs is Infinity. The Infinite Loops is the story of various characters from the universe caught up in the Time Loop, as they deal with the problems caused by having Infinite Time on their hands. Shenanigans ensue.**

Immediately below are the rest of the basics, as summarized by **Saphroneth**.

Loop mechanics (general):

 ** **—** One person in a Loop, often the main character, is an Anchor. They are the person who first starts time looping. **

****—** There is always at least one Anchor present in a given Time Loop snippet, though it may not be the local one. **

****—** The standard pattern for a loop is that the Anchor (and whoever else is Looping there) come to awareness in a loop at a particular point in the story. From there, events will play out as influenced by the Loopers present, acting with the benefit of their foreknowledge, until either a predetermined end point is reached or the anchor dies. **

****—** To be Awake is to be aware of the time loops (that is, to have gone back in time this time.) **

****—** The Anchor is the only character guaranteed to be Awake. Even after others have started looping, it is mostly random as to whether they will be Awake this particular loop. **

****—** Crossovers, fusions, and alternate pasts can also take place. It is perfectly possible, for example, to have the characters Awaken into a loop which conforms to a fanfic universe rather than reality. **

****—** Loops do not have to be in chronological order, but it is strongly preferred that they not require a mutually contradictory order (where A must be before B and B must be before A.) **

****—** Just about every Looper is very, very stir crazy.**

* * *

1.1 – Athena is the long-standing Admin for the Mass Effect Loops. This is why.  
1.2 – Quantum Looping? (There'll be a Star Trek chapter later on…)  
1.3 – There's a number of reasons to go to war. Why shouldn't 'for one's own amusement' be one of them?  
1.4 – …Sufficient Dakka to split the heavens?  
1.5 – Rule 63, abused for fun and profit!  
1.6 – D Rank: Fail… he _wished_.  
1.7 – Watchers: zero. Admins: lost count. (Mock e-mail addresses: lost in transit. Damn auto-edit functions...)  
1.8 – So much for the 'two terms in office' maximum…  
1.9 – What, Master Splinter can't be 'cool' and 'hip'? You really going to argue with Master Splinter?  
1.10 – The Crash, btw, is an event which coincided with the start of the first Misc. thread. For details, refer the Mega Loops compilation.  
1.11 – Phantom Cat! (Danny Phantom was the prior cross.)  
1.12 – Concert Tour: the one Variant that all four turtles can't stand.  
1.13 – The single earliest Misc. thread snip which didn't subsequently have another thread allocated for it. Also a staggeringly rare occurrence in the Infinite Loops: namely, an m/m pairing.  
1.14 – FEZ, apparently.  
1.15 – The 'Redeemed Villains Support Group', open to non-Loopers as well. (Sombra: _not Looping_.)  
1.16 – Seems cats don't play basketball either. How about that…  
1.17 – It's not that Haruhi's subconscious Ascends, so much as she's capable of poking her toes into Ascension and wrenching them back before anyone notices.  
1.18 – Believe it or not, confusion over which fandom out of the two of them was the bad news went on for _years_ …  
1.19 – Uzumaki, by Junji Ito: the first known Quarantined Branch.  
1.20 – …You don't want to know how long Ares was stuck doing this. You really don't.


	2. Misc: 2nd Thread

**2.1 (Admin Shenanigans) | {dreadis} March 6th, 2014…**

* * *

The battle had raged for eons, or a few minutes, those watching had forgotten. Father against daughter, Hathor was choking Ra from behind with a golden chain; sister against sister, Hathor was in turn being crushed by Sekhmet. Husband against wife, Osiris held Isis in a scissor lock. Guy against guy, Apep was doing his best to break Anubis' leg while kicking him in the chin.

None, not those fighting nor those watching, noticed a simple cardboard box slip slowly and carefully through the fringe of the melee to the active Yggdrasil terminal that started the spat.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.2 (Encyclopedia Brown) | {Crisis} March 4th, 2014…**

* * *

"Okay, why the heck are you summoning detective zombies and teleporting them to crime scenes this loop?" Sally asked her 'boss', one Leroy 'Encyclopedia' Brown: Local Anchor with a love for mysteries and a completely eidetic memory. Seriously, the boy could remember details from previous loops down to the most innocuous variant and calculate exactly how many loops he'd had since, and even tell her how many of those she was Awake for. It was a feat even _robot_ Loopers couldn't pull off reliably.

"Isn't it obvious?" the boy grinned at his partner and bodyguard in the detective business. The latter even more-so after her tomboyish tendencies soaked up some skills from combat-oriented fused loops. "I'm a necromantic Encyclopedia of translocation!"

Sally groaned and buried her face in her hands. Had she mentioned that his perfect memory made him even more stir-crazy than most?

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.3 (The Lost Fleet) | {dwennon} March 21st & 26th, 2014…**

* * *

As he Awoke to taking command of the alliance fleet in the Syndic Home System John Geary could only think of a few things, forefront of his mind being, 'What did I do to deserve this?'

And as he was thinking that a large man in an admiral's uniform with a great beard appeared before him and said, "Why nothing lad, and I'm here to tell you what's going on."

"Well, I've started to go insane."

"Ahahah, why no you haven't gone insane yet lad. Nor is this punishment. Time is looping because there's some problems with the universe and I, Dagda the Good, have come to tell you what's what," the newly named Dagda loudly stated.

"Why couldn't it just be impossible odds again, why living stars why?" John Geary said in a way reminiscent of his long suffering.

—ox-oxo-xo—

"So this isn't a test from the living stars," John Geary said in a tired manner.

"That is correct mi'laddo," Dagda the Good replied with, "And time is repeating for other "universes" as well. Yup."

"And at some point others will probably join me and I will go to other universes every so often when time resets."

"That's about right."

"...I'm not sure if this is a relief or the portents of something worse. So is there anything else I need to know?" John said before sitting down and sighing deeply.

"A few things, my daughter is going to send you some reading material and see if we can bring in another Looper to help you acclimate a bit better. Since I can't stay here too long."

"Alright, I just feel the need to ask. Before you go, can you please at least give me some way to improve the food we're stuck with?" John said in a tone that could be considered overly stressed.

Curious at this Dagda asked, "I suppose I could see what I could do, but why?"

"Because every time we start to run out of ration bars before we can get to a friendly base and need to resort to taking rations from enemy ships and bases. With those ration bars being more like a relatively low grade economy types of bars. The first few times through was bad, after a dozen and starting right around needing to take rations from the enemy, it's become too much for me to handle much more. So about all I ask is just some way to make those terrible ration bars less horrible."

Understanding John's plight in a way that not enough of his brethren would, Dagda decided to do something. Pulling out his cauldron of plenty, then from there pulling out a small parcel and handing it to John he said, "There's not much I can do, but here's something to help a little that will only last this loop. I need to leave now but don't worry, a Looper from another universe should be by soon to help show you the ropes." And with that Dagda disappeared.

"Well, there are few ways I can think of this getting worse."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.4 (The Honeymooners) | {Indalecio} March 27th , 2014…**

* * *

Two figures in spacesuits stood on the barren surface of Earth's Moon. A sleek spaceship was parked next to them.

"I told you Honey, I told you. One of these days...Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!" He mimicked the motion, sending his arm straight up into the air.

"Yes you did Ralph. Yes you did."

"Would you like to try Mars next?"

"Alright."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.5 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Crisis} March 6th, 2014…**

* * *

"Hello Zurvan," Morpheus, the god of dreams, greeted his coworker. "How are things going?"

"About as well as they usually do," the admin known as Zurvan, a mostly forgotten deity in the Hub with some common traits with the 'Father Time' being that many mortals liked to depict in regards to New Year celebrations, groused. "The Doctor's propensity for time travel is still crashing Yggdrasil's precognitive simulator every time I try to take it off Read-Only."

Morpheus winced despite how many times he'd heard that. Even with Yggdrasil damaged, the precognitive simulator could plot out every possible path the events in most universes could take and give odds for any given outcome accurate to four decimal places. To actually crash such a thing took an incomprehensibly large number of possible paths.

"I'm doing my best to patch up the possibility for paradoxes, but there's just so _many_ ," the god of infinite time sighed. "It's like trying to plug a leaky boat when you've got more leaks than boat. How are things with your project?"

"The 'Once Upon A Time' snarl has at least ten distinct branches that need Anchoring if I'm ever going to get it online," Morpheus grumbled. "Maybe as many as twenty, all irrevocably linked. I'm still trying to figure out what goes where actually."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.6 Form Letter | {Conceptualist} March 18th, 2014…**

* * *

Dear [insert name/title of entity here]

We have become aware that you are planning to ascend to a dimensional level that is higher than your base iteration can support. There are more reasons than you are currently capable of comprehending for why this is a bad idea. To put it simply:

 **DON'T.**

Sincerely,  
The Executive Administration of the Multiverse

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.7 (ElfQuest) | {dragonraptyr} March 18th, 2014…**

* * *

"Where do you think we wound up this time?" Skywise asked his chief, glancing down at the human holt below them. "It's not back home, I don't think. The scents are all wrong."

Cutter shrugged, not taking his eyes off of the house. "I think I heard it called the Hub before. Sort of like the Worldpool, I guess." He moved closer to the fence, staying as low as he could. "Here, we're just tales that might be so. Dreamberry visions."

Skywise wrinkled his nose as if he'd stumbled on a stinktail. "I'm not sure how much I like the idea of being someone's dreamberry vision." He watched Cutter laugh as the elf chief crouched quietly. "Let me guess, this holt is where that someone dens?"

Cutter nodded. "It's become a sort of custom, as far as I can guess, to pay a visit." He stood, contemplating his next move. "What do you think, the front of the holt, or the back?"

"Doesn't matter to me." Skywise shrugged. "You're the one who gets along with humans, anyway. You're the chief, Cutter. I'll follow your lead."

"The front it is, then. It'll prove interesting to see what they're doing." He stepped up to the door, rapping on it sharply in human fashion. Stepping back, he listened as muffled voices chattered inside for a moment before loud footsteps grew louder. Skywise hovered curiously behind him, chuckling. "Loud seems to be a trait of all humans." the silver haired stargazer muttered.

Then the door opened, and Cutter and Skywise looked at the very confused face of a Mr. Richard Pini. The human stood there speechless for a few moments, gaping like a particularly slow fish. "You're not reporters. Or well, anything I was expecting."

Cutter shrugged. "We hardly are what anyone expects." He watched the man look at them in no little bit of awe. Strange, but for a teller of tales to meet those figures, it had to be a bit strange. His ears perked as softer footsteps echoed behind the man, and the man's mate peered over his shoulder.

"Look Wendy. Look!" The man sounded almost giddy. "It's them!" he grabbed his mate and spun her about happily. "It's them!"

The woman, Wendy, smiled down at Cutter and Skywise, tears in her eyes. "Hello." She said softly. "It's wonderful to meet you at last."

Cutter smiled back. "Likewise."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.8 (Middle Earth) | {TheOneButcher} March 29th, 2014…**

* * *

Smaug looked at the Arkenstone the cornered Dwarves stole.

"Oh! And here I thought you tried to steal one of my gems... But that's just a Fool's Bauble."

Thorin Oakenshield was surprised. "What?"

"A Fool's Bauble! It's a worthless piece of fruit that tries to imitate a gemstone, but tries too hard. Really, diamonds of that size can't exist. But they do taste quite good with pork."

"Taste? Worthless? This is the Arkenstone! Heart of the Mountain! The greatest gem in Middle Earth! My forefathers have unearthed it here!"

At that Smaug let out a great bellow of laughter. "Sure, sure, hahahaha, I can't even eat you for that. It would be mean to eat someone so stupid. You know what? I'll gift that stone to you. In fact," the Dragon pulled forth a great sack from a nook in his cave, "Here, have a few more." And with that he upended the sack over their heads revealing a heap of diamonds as tall as them. All of them identical to the Stone in Bilbo's hand.

"No two real gemstones are exactly the same. But wait!" Smaug said and took a handful of them back. "They don't ripen for another few weeks, so I'll need to retain a few before next harvest. In fact," the Dragon took a handful more, "I think I'll go get myself a few pigs. Talking about Fool's Baubles has given me a craving."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.9 (Castlevania) | {Valentine Meikin} March 30th, 2014…**

* * *

Richter entered the room, expecting the usual speech to notice a man in a long white coat and incongruously modern attire slumped on Dracula's throne.

"Hello?" Richter asked, "Where's Dracula?"

"Dead. Long long story," the man offered. "So, never got to meet you in my time... It's... several decades in the future."

"So, how are you here?" Richter asked, completely confused over the fact someone from the distant future was sat in place of Dracula.

"I guess you're Looping..." The man offered, for Richter to nod, "Soma Cruz, the heir to Castlevania."

"Richter Belmont, the heir to the legacy of the Belmont family." Richter replied, "So, I guess you're not planning to destroy me."

"No. No, I wish to admit that I'll only feel my life is complete when I'm on your end of this battle."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.10 (Monster Girl Quest) | {Xward} March 30th, 2014…**

* * *

"Accept Illias as the one true god and denounce all others as false idols, and I will forgive past atrocities and protect and care for you as I would any other follower."

The Roper only glared at Luka despite her broken body.

Luka always considered himself of having a good moral compass, of knowing what was wrong and what was right. If he didn't he never would have gone on his journey for co-existence between humankind and monster girls. Then why was he going around in his half-angel form, calling himself "The voice of Illias", beating up monsters to the brink of death, and then asking them to worship Illias and join his growing rebellion against the monster lord? Maybe he had finally gone insane from these loops, maybe he believed his actions would be free of consequence.

...Or maybe it was because he had a horrible vore loop and wanted to actually have a consensual relationship with an angel this time.

Loopers who said that Eiken was bad needed to get their casual asses away from Luka.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.11 (Middle Earth) | {Saphroneth} March 31st, 2014…**

* * *

Bilbo Baggins crept through the corridors of the Lonely Mountain, towards the chamber that Thorin insisted the Dragon Dread was using as his lair.

The rumbling snores echoing through the whole mountain suggested that, for now at least, Smaug was asleep.

Eventually he came upon a vast cavern. Lying there, curled into a ball, was a huge red dragon.

And nothing else.

There was no treasure whatsoever, except for a not-particularly-ornate picture frame ten feet high. And the pile of brushes and paints next to it, and the half-finished landscape on it, rather implied that they weren't treasure so much as a hobby.

As Bilbo tiptoed forward, Smaug snorted and opened a single reptilian eye. Which rolled, and then closed again.

Smaug's tail flicked out, pointing to a sign near the door.

 _Bed-cavern of Smaug the Lazy._  
 _Do Not Disturb._  
 _For Treasure, Take First Left After Stairs._

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.12 (Monster Girl Quest) / (My Little Pony) / (Legend of Zelda) / (Mass Effect) / (Goat Simulator) | {Xward} March 31st, 2014…**

* * *

"Okay, so lets put aside the obvious question for a second and figure out who's looping. I'm Luka from the Monster Girl Quest Loops."

"The Great and Powerful TRIXIE from the Equestria Loops."

"Ganon from Hyrule."

"Garrus from Mass Effect."

"MAAAH."

"And that is just a regular goat, now the obvious question: why are we goats?"

That was the question on each Looper's mind currently: "Why am I a goat?" When waking up this loop all four of our Loopers were surprised to find out that they had become goats in a small field enclosed by wooden fences. Garrus, a blue-gray goat with a chipped horn on his left side, decided to answer this the best he could.

"Did you expect a reason Luka?"

Luka, a light purple goat with brown spots, sighed and said, "No, I just thought it wouldn't hurt to ask."

Trixie, a sky blue goat that still retained her hat, decided to say something. "Idle chatter will get us nowhere, let's find something to do here. Maybe something to explode if we're lucky."

Ganon, a large, deep brown goat, also wanted to add something. "That may be hard to do since I can't access anything other than my subspace pocket."

Each Looper immediately tried to use any skill that normally traveled with them through the Loops, only to come up blank. Luka summed it up best.

"Well fuck."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.13 (Burn Notice) | {Detective Ethan Redfield} April 7th, 2014…**

* * *

 _My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy until I received a burn notice. Now I am living those years over and over again with the help of a trigger happy girlfriend, an old friend who informs on me to the FBI if I'm ever in Miami, family too...if I'm desperate, and any other Looper who is thrown into my Loop. Bottom line: when you're Looping, you're not going anywhere._

Mike's Awakening often occurred just as he received his burn notice from the CIA contact on the other end of his cell phone: "Michael Weston? We have a burn notice on you. You're blacklisted."

Blinking, he closed the phone and returned it to his suit pocket.

 _When handling negotiations with warlords, you are unable to bring firearms or bladed weapons into the same room as said warlord, unless they are either really confident in their security or really stupid. Fortunately for someone who has a subspace pocket and the ability to draw items from said pocket, this is not an issue. Make your shots count as there won't be a second chance to get it right..._

His body turned to where there were no guards to see his actions as a Walther PPK with attached silencer materialized in his hand, already cocked and ready to fire. Before every loop ended, he made sure this gun was well oiled, the parts were in working order, and that it was fully loaded and ready to fire at a moment's notice. The warlord and his men never stood a chance as the American ex-spy took down each one in rapid succession.

 _If you are in a situation that you need to fake your death, the best way is total incineration. No usable DNA. However, make sure you bash out the teeth of one of the operatives to prevent dental records from being used to identify the bodies, never the man in charge, however. Switch your outfit for that of the corpse's and use a hammer on the teeth. Intelligence operatives will suspect you were tortured by having your teeth beat in. After accomplishing this, attach a bomb charge to another man's body. The same organization will believe a rival warlord sent in a suicide bomber and you were killed as a side note._

With his dirty deed done, Michael climbed out of the window and pressed the detonator. The heatwave from the orange fireball washed over him, but he failed to respond as he disappeared into the heart of the Nigerian jungle, intent on starting a new life as Charles Finley. It should at least get the attention of Sam Axe as he got some distance from the organization and planned his counterattack.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.14 (Garfield) | {Valentine Meikin} April 14th, 2014…**

* * *

Garfield got up, glancing around. As far as his life was concerned, he was apparently repeating portions of his life, and he had a simple way to deal with it. His first act was to get a box, stuffing Nermal into it, and mailing it to a random address got off the internet. Secondly, he punted Odie off the table, before giving Jon sleeping pills and himself a ample share of the lasagna supply of the house.

If anything was different about the world, from loop to loop, he'd not noticed. There was one minor difference in each repetition. He'd figured out that Japan didn't send Nermal back because half the addresses he sent the kitten to adopted him on the spot, Siberia usually sent a message apologizing about Nermal freezing to death, and so on and so forth. He now actually knew how to properly dispose of a unneeded kitten. A few more loops, and he'd have a good set of addresses for randomly picking where to get rid of the cutest kitten in America.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.15 (Monster Girl Quest) | {Xward} April 1st & 3rd, 2014…**

* * *

 **A Tall Tail part 1**

'Alright then, how should I spend this loop?'

Luka did what most Loopers did when encountering a loop similar to their base-line, plan out what to do.

'I could try uniting the human nations under one flag again, but I still don't know how to deal with the resulting civil war that happens when I start the peace talks with Alice. But first things first, time to remove this ring!'

The most annoying thing to Luka about his loops was that he usually started them wearing his mother's ring. While he was overjoyed the first time to have an intact version of his mother's ring, it quickly grew old as he needed to remember to take the ring off each loop.

'Welp, here goes!'

*POMF* *twitch* *swish*

'...My current loop memories had better explain this.'

Turned out they did. Apparently this loop his dad had small amounts of monster blood in him, but it was enough to do _something_ to Luka. While a half monster and half angel was impossible to be naturally created, his human blood acted as a binding for the dark and light magic within him. The result? Luka had become a male monster.

'Well that explains the tails…'

Specifically an eight-tailed Kitsune. Immediately he put Promestein under 'people I should not meet under any circumstances this loop'.

'…Bounty Hunter Luka sounds like a good loop to do in this situation.'

* * *

 **A Tall Tail part 2**

Immediately the first thing that Luka noticed that was different about being a Kitsune, besides the eight fluffy tails (oddly enough his tails felt coarser than Tamamo's), was the colossal assault to his senses. It was hard to explain, while in angel mode he felt like he was a fire going through a field, probably due to the fact that light and dark magic don't normally occur in nature. As a Kitsune he felt like he was a blade of grass in a field, in other words: he felt one with nature. Alice would probably just hit Luka over the head and say: "Stop romanticising this, all it means is that you can smell, see, and run better. And that means you have no excuses for not cooking".

Speaking of Alice…

'Right, I should also get Angel Halo.'

The second thing that annoyed him about his loops besides the ring was that he didn't begin with his signature weapon: Angel Halo. While that would normally be remedied by putting her in his subspace pocket, Angel Halo was a Looping Artifact so she always looped back with him and thus always Awoke at her standard location. Luka wondered whether or not Angel Halo was attached to this Loop or to him as he had not had a loop without her, but that was besides the point. Luka wasn't helpless though, he wouldn't have gone through all those without devising a way to get Angel Halo back. Though his mom helped a bit.

'Alright then, I just put my fingers up to my lips and...'

Luka put both his index and middle finger up to his mouth and whistled. While also reaching out with his free hand.

*CRASH*

With a loud noise Angel Halo burst through Luka's wall and landed into his waiting hand.

Luka smiled. "Good girl." Angel Halo purred in response.

Due to some tips from his mother and some experimentation of his own, Luka had somehow gave Angel Halo a sort of pseudo-intelligence. Along with that he found out he could absorb sealed beings into her and add a sort of "Biomass" to her that enabled the ability to change into different weapon types or possibly make multiples. It was pretty cool.

"Okay, before we do anything we should probably visit Aunt Micaela. She would probably be able to vouch for me if anyone doubts my origins." Though he would probably have to explain the Loops to Micaela, again.

And so Luka set off on his loop, completely ignoring the vapor cloud and mentally cursing purple snake.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.16 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Kalimaru} April 20th, 2014…**

* * *

Hephaestus slammed his hands down on the console. "INFERNAL PIECE OF-! URAGH!" In one motion, the volcano god was up and throwing his chair across the room. As it became embedded in the wall, Hephaestus started causing the air around him to heat as he began snarling. "You start these unstable worlds, but when I try to fix them? INCOMPATIBLE, YOU WASTE!" There was a knock at the door. "WHAT?!"

Opening the door, Athena slid into the room. "This a bad time?"

Seeing who it was, Hephaestus took in a deep breath of air and then exhaled great rolling billows of black smoke and ash. "No, it's fine. What d'you want?"

Walking over to the embedded chair, Athena gripped it at one leg and pulled it from the wall before walking it over. "It's the Smash Branch. We managed to trim it down so that it took less space on the Safe Mode Server, but now it's way too dependent on the ties it has with the Non-Safe Branches. Apollo suggested we find a few Branches that could be put into a Safe-Mode that would reinforce it. I came to you to see if you had any candidates."

Taking the chair and sitting in it, Hephaestus pulled up a list of various Loops. "I have a few here if you're interested, but I don't know if they'll do what you want 'em to since they're unstable and all."

Leaning over Hephaestus' shoulder, Athena went down the list until she found a Branch that had been recently tested. "What happened with this one?"

Hephaestus sighed and let out a puff of dark smoke. "Tried to jumpstart it with a fused Loop. Figured the space in Wii Fit would work with the Punch Out setup and population. Just led to errors instead."

"Hmm." Looking further down the list, Athena couldn't find anything else interesting. "Well, Wii Fit doesn't seem particularly 'supernatural', so I think it'll work. Try running the numbers."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.17 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Valentine Meikin} April 15th, 2014…**

* * *

Skuld looked at the seemingly innocuous toaster. One of the other Admins had pulled it out of a loop, after it was found that it was, firstly, not in the right place, secondly, not in the right time, and thirdly, had driven a non-Awake person to commit suicide due to its one foible. She manifested a plug outlet, and plugged it in. After a few seconds, it 'looked' at her with a rudimentary camera, then powered up fully.

"Would you like some toast?" the device asked cheerfully.

"No." Skuld asked, "I just want to know why you drove someone to suicide."

"The Talkie Toaster does not drive people to suicide. It makes toast," the device replied, still just as cheerfully.

"Right, I'll just be going..." Skuld began, for it to speak up.

"Would you like a nice croissant to nibble on?" the toaster had asked.

"No," she replied, wondering what was wrong with this thing.

"A baguette?" it tried.

"No," she growled.

"A hot cross bun?" it attempted.

"N-O." Skuld declared, starting to get annoyed.

"Some ciabatta bread?" it tried.

Skuld rooted in her things for that flamethrower she'd been testing before the Loops began.

A short time later, Loki found the smoldering pieces of a electronic toaster in his in-tray.

"So, Why did I get this from Skuld?" he wondered.

 _'I found a good thing to toast,'_ Skuld's message about it read.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.18 (Honor Harrington) | {Albert} April 22nd-23rd & June 24th, 2014…**

* * *

Later, much later when she had time to consider everything, Honor counted herself _very_ lucky that this insane reset of the universe brought her to while she was still en route to _Fearless_ to take command. It gave her time for paranoia and panic, without giving Nimitz a . . . _living_ target to shred.

It was his reactions as much as anything that convinced her that this was not a simulation. Honor hadn't known how to sense his feelings, back when she'd only been a Captain JG, but even though she was in her younger body – and without the cybernetic replacements she'd used for decades, for that matter – she found herself able to reach out and 'taste his mindglow', to use the idiom that the treecats had insisted was the closest translation to what they called it. (Sort of. Treecat telepathy did not have any form of aural communication in its evolutionary tree, and Nimitz had eventually admitted to Honor that it had been the work of _generations_ to come up with a successful gestalt that allowed memory singers to teach young 'cats how to process the subtleties of meaning from something as _alien_ as precisely-modulated 'purrs-and-chirps-and-howls'.) Since no simulation could hope to mimic something as poorly understood as Honor's empathic sense, she quickly found herself accepting that this was either a very convincing hallucination, or it was somehow real.

It couldn't be real, of course. As much as she hated math, she'd done the same proofs that all Manticoran officer cadets did, showing how even FTL didn't allow a person to tamper with their own 'light cone', which prevented meaningful time travel. But as hallucinations went, this one was damned convincing. And it was a chance at a reunion with friends long-lost to battle and mischance.

That realization sent pure, unalloyed joy through her, which finally calmed Nimitz down enough for the two of them to make themselves presentable enough to take command of the _Fearless_.

Honor could taste the resentment of Alistair McKeon this time, but her command presence had been honed by decades of naval, feudal, and political experience, and her empathy gave her instant feedback on how well she was doing. McKeon's resentment withered down to a few grumbles in response to her sheer happiness at being onboard.

Even the grav lance didn't really get her down. Oh, sure, it crippled her beloved ship, and there wasn't anything that could be done about that. But she had what she'd need to do the job.

It _was_ tempting to hit Sonja Hemphill with some preemptive arguments that Honor was pretty sure would get the R &D mavin thinking along more productive lines – but the situation in Basilisk needed her, and so she followed the script of events that she recalled, and soon found her ship in unofficial exile, and herself docking with the _Warlock_ to report to Pavel Young.

It took no small amount of self-control to keep from tackle-hugging Paul Tankersley.

Handling Young, on the other hand, was easy. This time, Honor knew how to use cosmetics to soften the last traces of coltish, adolescent awkwardness that would fade away entirely over the next few years, and she could taste how his disdain for her "low" status was almost overcome by the surge of lust Young felt when he saw her. The only difficulty Honor had was when she realized, from how his emotions shifted as he spoke, that Young was seriously contemplating seducing her once the _Warlock_ 's refit was complete. Fortunately, she neither killed him nor burst out laughing.

Her conference with her senior officers went a little differently.

"This," she told them, waving towards a graphical outline of their substantial responsibilities, "is what the Navy is supposed to be doing on Basilisk Station. This," waving at a much, _much_ smaller graphic, "is what is traditionally accomplished. However, as soon as the _Warlock_ goes through the wormhole, naval presence in the system will have effectively made a clean break. Let me be clear: The old traditions of this station are now _gone_. For the next several weeks, we will have free run of this place, and our _new_ tradition is that we fulfill _all_ of our obligations to our station, our Kingdom, and our Queen."

With that, she led them through much the same plan as she had the first time, albeit with a few minor optimizations that she had thought of later. She already had better _esprit de corps_ from them, and with the increased confidence she projected her senior officers found themselves swept along, and much more willing to take her plan seriously than they had the last time.

Things went better, in the main, and Honor's chief personal regret, afterward, was that by hitting the Peep Q-ship in the aft ring with a laser as it tried to flee prevented her from being able to address the Board on the subject of grav lances.

But it wasn't long before the _Fearless_ was turned over to Hemphill as a testbed vessel, and Honor found herself in Silesia, captaining the Heavy Cruiser _Fearless_ , newly commissioned and named. Hunting pirates was very nearly a vacation for her – until a battle with a small privateer squadron saw a missile blast straight through the _Fearless_ 's armor and into the command center.

With a start, she found herself en route to the _Fearless_ again, Captain JG again, with Basilisk ahead of her. _Again_.

This time she tried to stick as close as she could to the original timeline, and _Fearless_ was blown to smithereens in the missile duel with the Peep Q-ship.

* * *

In the third repeat, Nimitz immediately began signing at Honor in panic, and they quickly established that he remembered all the long decades of her original life, but not the first two repeats. It did not take him long to calm down, 'cats being less prone to abstract worry than humans, and especially after Honor pointed out that his telepathy was very likely restored to him.

This time, she neutralized the Q-ship, then in Silesia set an ambush for the privateer squadron that kept the _Fearless_ from ever being exposed to more than light missile fire. She drew the mission to Yeltsin's star once more, and in the beginning the touchiest part was handling her parents and Admiral Courvosier, who could both tell that she'd 'grown up a _lot_ ' in the last few years.

Houseman was annoying, but at least she'd looked up the buzzwords currently in vogue at Mannheim University of Economics, and was therefore able to converse with him in his native lingo, rather than try anything so gauche as argue with an intellectual using the Queen's Standard English.

The Graysons were amusing, in a way. Another of Honor's research projects had been the ways that male-dominated cultures had allowed for the occasional exceptional woman to lead. Specifically the 'Joan of Arc' phenomenon. So when she was introduced to Admiral Yanakov, she unleashed the full measure of her command presence as well as all the graciousness she'd learned in her decades as Steadholder and Duchess Harrington.

She had Courvosier gaping in minutes, and the Graysons eating out of her hand not too long after.

Knowing what she'd learned from Captain Yu in the original future, and remembering how she'd been intimidated by the Graysons last time, Honor chose to keep the _Fearless_ in-system and send the other, smaller ships on with the convoy. Then, in a move that surprised even Courvosier with her boldness (and willingness to use something that was still highly classified), she deployed her FTL sensor drones far enough out to catch the approach of the Masadan raiders in time to sneak past _Thunder of God_ and _Principality_ and blow the Masadan navy to hell.

Not particularly wanting to spend a year in rehab, Honor smuggled a pair of pulsers to the 'simple family dinner' she was invited to by Protector Mayhew (the switch confused her, until she met him and tasted his mindglow – then she had to keep from laughing as she realized that a nascent 'pro-Honor' faction's first reaction to her victory was to try to figure out how to get her to marry the Protector), and took down the assassins alongside Captain Fox, who was very quick to react once she shot the disrupter out of the hand of the man who would have killed him.

With the FTL drones confirming that _Thunder of God_ and _Principality_ had beat a hasty retreat (and thank God for Yu's evaluation of 'Sword' Simonds), with no Manticoran prisoners to worry about taking out Blackbird was all too easy. And then when Honor's fleet returned before the Haven-built units, sending the Madrigal to alert Manticore was the easiest decision she'd made so far.

Honor was counting on Yu to stall and Simonds to take over the ships, and when the modern Battlecruiser and Destroyer ran away from her sudden appearance she decided she was correct. This time she 'guessed' that the crews were all-Masadan right away, and instructed Rafe Cardones to prepare for the possibility of getting nukes through purely automated defenses.

Two minutes into the fight, the three Manticoran ships launched a combined salvo that managed to get 5 nukes through the defenses of the two Havenite-built ships, gutting _Principality_ and crippling _Thunder of God_ on one side (including an acceleration ring). With the enemy ships unable to flee, the Manticorans closed the range and disabled both ships before boarding and capturing the surviving crews.

After that it was really only a matter of mopping up in Endicott and being made Steadholder(and Countess) Harrington.

Except that, while she got a _Reliant_ -class battlecruiser, it wasn't _Nike_ , and her ship was already on assignment when Hancock station was reinforced. The First Battle of Hancock ended in a painful defeat for Manticore, and Honor still hadn't managed to find out if Paul Tankersley had been killed or merely taken captive when her new ship was destroyed in action in the assault on Seaford Nine.

 _What if you tried another path?_ Nimitz asked, thankfully aware of the long future he'd lived with her as well as the most recent stretch of 4 or 5 years.

"Can I afford to, Stinker? The people at Hancock died bravely, but I was so very lucky the first time. The Kingdom needs solid victories at Basilisk, Yeltsin, _and_ Hancock, and that means I need to be there to force things to happen."

 _But your weapons are about to change, yes? Are they not linked to the lance you so despise?_

"Barely. The grav lance can be modified to take down a civilian wedge if you stage-manage all the conditions, and that's what set Sonja on the road to FTL drones and comms, but . . .

"But the power plants for those were then parlayed into the mass drivers that modern missile pods need . . ."

Honor glared at her 'cat. "Stinker, do you have _any_ idea how much math cutting-edge gravitic research requires?"

Nimitz's return look was too innocent to be genuine. _The People have never been very good with abstract reasoning._

"I can't just give her the solutions. I have to give her the proofs, as well."

 _But it could be done?_

"Not with all my other duties, not in time to help. But after Yeltsin I might be able to work with her for a while, given that I'll have used the drones, and if I memorize all the math for next time . . ."

Honor still didn't get to Hancock station, and she still fell in battle not too long after, but she _was_ able to memorize all the data she needed to shave at least 3 years off of Manticoran grav research.

* * *

"My Lords and Ladies of the Weapons Development Board, thank you for the kind invitation to speak today on the subject of the grav lance." It was the first time she'd addressed the Board since the original time-line, and she'd managed to earn an invitation by using the grav lance to cripple the Peep Q-ship as it began to flee Basilisk.

"Taking down a side-wall is no small feat, especially from a hundred thousand klicks away. Indeed, compared to the performance of a standard missile's penaids, where a sidewall is merely weakened along a tiny area, the performance of the grav lance seems miraculous. As little as fifty years ago, the grav lance would have allowed Manticore to dominate in any capital ship engagement.

"Time, unfortunately, has marched on. The same advances in technology that make a grav lance viable have also conspired to strangle it in its infancy.

"Why do ships approach each other when missiles can strike from millions of klicks away? Because it is a tactical reality that a missile cannot hope to survive the last 30 thousand kilometers of its attack run against a competent wall of battle. The missile is both too close to hope to fool the sensors of a capital ship, and also too close for random vector shifting to prevent point-defense lasers from hitting and destroying it. Even an autocannon, obsolete as they are, can intercept where a missile with a classic warhead _must_ maneuver to as its attack vectors narrow.

"Thus, Ships of the Wall must close to within beam distance in order to inflict decisive damage in a battle. This has been the tactical reality for centuries.

"As a weapon, the grav lance posits that if Ships of the Wall must close to within 400 thousand klicks, they will retain their momentum, and so inevitably close to within a _hundred_ thousand klicks, at which point the grav lance comes into play, the enemy side-walls go down, and battle is decided then and there in our favor.

"This argument enjoys the twin advantages of mathematical rigor and historical vindication. All things remaining equal, the presence of the grav lance would force enemy Ships of the Wall to either adopt this technology, retreat before closing to energy range, or face annihilation."

Admiral Hemphill's expression was very carefully neutral as she cut in. "You have made what sounds like a very good argument _in favor_ of wide-spread adoption of the grav lance. How do you propose to demonstrate the opposite, Captain Harrington?"

Honor smiled slightly. "I will not deny the strengths of the grav lance. As I said, as little as fifty years ago, Manticore would have dominated with this technology. However, that was then, and this is now. The argument for the grav lance has one major weakness: It presupposes that in order for a major battle to be decisively won or lost, Ships of the Wall _must_ inevitably close to close energy range.

"Consider the laser-head missile. A laser-head does less damage, overall, than a contact nuke, but modern grav-lenses permit the missile to hit targets at a range of up to 40 thousand klicks. Again, missiles cannot survive within _30_ thousand klicks of a Wall of Battle. These, however, do not have to.

"Against a competent Wall of Battle, the majority of missiles do not survive to within 40 thousand klicks, but _some_ will. If they are laser-heads, they can then inflict damage. What this means, my Lords and Ladies of the Board, is that Ships of the Line can be dealing damage to each other from millions of klicks away, whereas before they had to get to within about 400 thousand klicks before their beams were strong enough to burn through sidewalls.

"The grav lance creates the threat of close-range supremacy, but for the threat of close-range supremacy to dominate a naval battle, the threat of long-range supremacy must be negligible by comparison. That is no longer the case. The threat of long-range supremacy is on the rise as modern navies adopt the laser-head. It can be expected to continue to increase for the foreseeable future, especially as ways are sought to overwhelm or saturate anti-missile defenses. Given how long it takes for ships to close from extreme missile range to energy range, it is now possible – even likely – that one side or another will inflict decisive damage while still outside energy range.

"And once inflicted, the commanding officer of the losing side has the unpalatable choice of whether to attempt to flee through the same storm of missiles that already half-crippled her fleet, to surrender, or to die in a largely-futile attempt to inflict further damage against a foe that has already established superiority.

"The log-jam of outdated concepts has been breaking up out from under our feet for the last few decades. If we have not previously noticed, it is only because there has not been a major war in our lifetimes to settle matters one way or another."

—ox-oxo-xo—

Afterward, Admiral Hemphill sought out Honor for a private conversation.

"I must admit, I thought you were more of a Traditionalist," she began with.

"I am, for the most part. An integrated Wall of Battle will still provide the best anti-missile defenses, even in the face of a missile swarm." Honor quirked her lips. "Or at least I can't imagine anything else surviving the nightmare of hundreds of missiles howling in on their targets. So the fundamental tactical doctrine remains the same."

"Perhaps," Hemphill allowed. "I've ordered some simulations prepared. If they agree with you, it looks like we may need to reconsider our energy/missile/antimissile recommendations. Again."

Honor allowed the quirk in her lips to expand to a wry smile. "I suppose I could be accused of being a _jeune ecole_ sympathizer, because I have to admit I dislike how formalized fleet tactics have become over the last six hundred T-years. The prospect of inflicting decisive damage is an exciting one, but nonetheless the grav lance simply cannot overcome its limitations. I've checked."

"Oh, you have?" Now Hemphill's voice was tart, but Honor simply nodded.

"I was looking for any possible way to extend the range. A grav lance that could strike at five or six hundred k-klicks, for example, would tilt energy combat decisively in Manticoran favor. But the math says it can't really work."

"Does it?"

"If I'm right, we could have reprogrammed the grav lance, stepped down the power in favor of focus, and _maybe_ been able to knock out a civilian impeller at about a million klicks. Or send pulsed codes at FTL speeds, but at a _horribly_ slow rate of transmission."

Admiral Hemhill's eyebrows shot up. " _How_ slow?"

Honor shrugged. "No faster than the firing rate of the grav lance. You could probably send a message faster just by blinking a wedge on and off, albeit with less security. Anyway, I suppose I should offer you the proofs I worked out, even if they're just useful for killing the grav lance a little more dead."

"No, no, I don't mind. Who knows, they might be useful for something."

"Oh?"

"Well, if we start from something a little less clumsy than an entire ship's wedge."

Honor nodded. "Alright. I'll send them over. But I should warn you that math really isn't my strong point, and I can't promise that the proofs are enough for academic rigor."

—ox-oxo-xo—

Later, when Honor was alone with Nimitz:

 _Did she take the bait?_

"I think so, Stinker. Especially since I implied my math was sloppy – it won't take her _too_ much work to arrive at the full proofs, but until she does everything I gave her was just a hypothesis. She'll have a perfectly valid reason to list herself as the main researcher and only give me supporting credit."

 _Then, as long as she doesn't interfere with us before Yeltsin's Star, this may work out._

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.19 (Middle Earth) | {Saphroneth} April 26th, 2014…**

* * *

Gandalf strode out of Fangorn at the head of the truncated Fellowship.

"We must make haste to Edoras," he said, his clear voice carrying effortlessly. "The shadow moves more quickly, and darkness grows in Isengard."

He whistled, three long warbling notes followed by a pair of shorter ones.

With a great clap of leathery wings, a red shape swept over the nearest swale and alighted in front of them, landing with great precision.

Gandalf leant forward, scratching the newcomer under the chin. "This is Smaugleafearno, the lord of all horses."

Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli exchanged looks.

"Lad, are you sure you came back alright?" Gimli ventured. "That there's a dragon."

"He has been my friend through many dangers," Gandalf rebuked gently. "And is he not a magnificent specimen? No other horse comes close."

"Neigh," Smaugleafearno said unconvincingly.

"See?" Gandalf asked, bestowing a beatific smile on the three warriors.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.20 (Inspector Gadget) | {Crisis} April 26th, 2014…**

* * *

"Penny, as a Looper I have a duty to improve our universe," Inspector Gadget explained calmly, "and as the Anchor, I am _always_ on duty."

"Of course Uncle Gadget," Penny rolled her eyes. She'd tried to explain that he wasn't the Anchor before, but her uncle's weird sense of self importance kept filtering the concept out before it could reach his brain.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.21 (Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe) | {Kickaha [a.k.a. Ed Becerra]} April 27th, 2014…**

* * *

Alexander looked around. This was the third time, and he was certain he was going mad. Waking up on the ship, encountering the island, learning to survive - the only changes were how fast he learned. Was he mad? Was time repeating itself? Why would God do this to him?

At least he could remember the joy of his rescue. And the memories helped him in avoiding the evil Spaniards.

But what did this all mean?

He looked around and sighed. Another four long years to endure.

He would pray.

Often.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.22 (Sherlock Holmes) / (Transformers) | {Kris Overstreet} April 29th, 2014…**

* * *

"Watson," Holmes said quietly, "do you have your pistol on you?"

Dr. Joan Watson looked around her. "Holmes, we're in your apartment." A second glance. "We're in your KITCHEN. There's no sign of any disturbance."

"Nonetheless I would be comforted if you drew your pistol and had it at the ready," Sherlock Holmes murmured, licking his lips nervously.

"Oh, all right," Watson said, pulling her police-permit handgun from her purse. "But why? What are you afraid of? Air-guns?"

"No. Decepticons."

Joan looked at Holmes, who displayed not the first sign of humor. "Decepticons."

"Yes."

"Evil robots from a children's cartoon and toy line."

"Yes."

"Giant, evil robots, who generally can't fit inside a New York apartment."

"Just so."

Joan Watson couldn't stifle the snort. The snort met a giggle. The two fell in love, and in no time at all they had a litter of frisky baby laughs running all over.

Holmes, after several seconds, couldn't avoid laughing himself at the absurdity, however logical, of his conclusion.

The toaster joined in, its laugh distinctly malevolent.

Holmes and Watson froze into silence, staring at the toaster as it rocked on the countertop with laughter.

After several seconds the toaster noticed the attention. It realized the world was a lot less funny with a nine-millimeter slug about to perforate your none-too-well armored internals.

"Er... er..." The toaster cast about frantically for any words which might save it. "Um... Co-BRAAAAAAAAAAA...?"

That word turned out to be a loser, as the single gunshot verified moments later.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.23 (Divergent) / (DC Comics) | {Lord Circe} May 1st, 2014…**

* * *

Tris opened her eyes. It was pitch black, but she could hear the rustling as her fellow initiates moved around her. It was time. The serum had been activated, and her fellow Dauntless were being controlled.

Focusing inward, Tris found that inner space, the subspace pocket that Dick had taught her about, and two objects emerged. One dropped onto the bed, glowing green, and the other fell into her palm. She quickly slipped the small ring from her palm onto her right ring finger, and then pointed it at the softly glowing lantern resting on her sheets.

"From Abnegate home, to Dauntless tower  
I call on my free heart's power.  
Don't look back, never stand still.  
Burn bright, fight on, my Divergent Will!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Tris saw Kristine and Will turning to look at her, before the world shone green.

* * *

Tris' Loops were not pleasant, in the most polite terms. They tended to start in one of three places: In front of her family mirror before her test, during the test itself, or at the moment when her blood landed on the coals. The first time she Awoke, she had froze as her mother brushed her hair, before spinning around to hug her. Immediately afterwards, she had shoved her mom away, fearing that she was trapped in a simulation, somehow. But it never ended.

Loops tended to run either until she died, which happened depressingly often in her first loops. She tried to stop the Abnegation Massacre by whatever means possible, but it was almost impossible to convince people of the existence of either the Bureau or the Erudite Conspiracy without them experiencing it themselves. At one point, in frustration, she simply hurled the stone bowl of coals at Jeanine after Awakening there. She died very shortly after that.

If she Awoke early, she could hide her Divergence somewhat, which made it easier to move around, but didn't really help her in stopping everything. She had only successfully ended the Massacre once, by contaminating the "tracker fluid", causing most of Dauntless to become extremely ill. The Erudite moved anyway a little while later.

Then came The Loop. It was how she would always think of it. She had Awoke in a bed, so soft and warm. She had immediately suspected a simulation, but it all just felt real. She had found her parents downstairs. There was a mirror in the bathroom, and the house looked..."normal". She had gone to school, which was completely bizarre, but somehow nostalgic. Her Loop Memories talking, she now knew, but for the first several days, she had wandered, totally confused about everything that was going on. Then the ring came.

She had been sitting on her roof, looking up at the stars, and finally starting to relax, when a small green ring had flown up to her, flickering with green light, and an odd voice spoke.

"Be-Beatrice Pri-o-or of 'rth, y-y-you hav-ave the abili-ity to-to-to overcom-me gr-great fear. Wel-wel-welcome to the Green-en Lanter-ern Corps-s." The ring then slid onto her right hand.

Tris flipped out. She leapt up, pulling at the ring, but it wouldn't come off, and then Tris slid sideways off the roof. By instinct, she twisted, preparing to land and roll on the lawn below. But the impact never came. Tris glanced down, to find her feet hovering a foot off of the ground. She then noticed a faint green glow surrounding her body. The glow flickered twice, then vanished, and Tris landed on the lawn with a gasp.

After another fruitless attempt to pull the ring off, she made her way quickly inside.

—ox-oxo-xo—

It was three days later, at night once again, when Dick, or rather Nightwing, showed up. Tris had been examining the ring. It had seemed familiar to her, in a way that she couldn't quite place. She had kept it a secret from her parents and brother so far, but she was starting to get nervous. She had just made another attempt to pull the ring off when a tap came from her window. She glanced up and gasped. A thin man with black hair and an odd blue and black outfit was crouched on the ledge outside her window, grinning at her.

After a few moments of staring at him, her mouth hanging open, Tris drew herself up and moved over, pulling open the window to demand what he thought he was doing.

"Aha, I knew I would be the one to find you. Man, tricorders are awesome." The man slid into the room, slipping past her easier, even as she lashed out to block him. "Whoa, careful, you could hurt someone like that." He laughed softly, and Tris scowled.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

The man tilted his head. "Don't recognize me? I know I'm not as photogenic as Superman, but you must have heard of Nightwing."

Tris shook her head. Superman was familiar, some kind of heroic flying man, but Nightwing was only a sidenote, something about fighters in Gotham City. She hadn't paid much attention, focusing more on the wonderful feeling of not having to fight for her life and that of her family.

The man shrugged. "Well, the name is Nightwing, and, due to an unfortunate accident with a Star Dragon, you are one of the Green Lanterns of Earth."

"Green Lantern? The ring mentioned that. What the heck is going on?"

Nightwing frowned as he stared at her for a moment. "First off, what's your name?"

"...Tris. Tris Prior."

Nightwing reached into a pocket and pulled out a thin plastic pad. He poked at a digital screen on it for a moment, before nodding. He then looked at her. "Quick question. Has time been repeating for you?"

Tris blinked, before nodding eagerly. "Yeah. Yeah, it has. Has it been happening to you? Do you know why?"

"Whoa whoa." Nightwing held up his hands. "Slow down. Yeah, it has been happening to me. Hold on, I will give you the full run down."

—ox-oxo-xo—

After Nightwing explained about the Multiverse Tree, Yggdrasil, and how it was broken, he described the ring and what it was for.

"The Green Lantern Corps is sort of a space police force. The rings they use are powered by the energy of Willpower. Using it, you can form anything you can imagine, so long as you have power."

Tris' mind shot back to the night she fell off the roof. "Like flying?"

Nightwing grinned as he flopped down on her bed. "Yep." He reached out, and a green ring appeared on his finger. The ring lit up, and the green glow Tris had seen before flowed around Nightwing, replacing the blue in his costume. Slowly, he floated up off the bed, rotating until he was standing upright, before bowing. Tris gaped, before staring down at the ring on her finger. It flickered, but no glow came forth.

"Yeah, it's out of power. You can power it on your own, but it is pretty difficult. Instead, you need to use one of these." Tris looked up, just in time to catch a large green lantern that Nightwing had tossed towards her. She stumbled, glanced at the lantern, then glared up at him accusingly. He grinned.

"There is a standard oath that you can use to access the power, but I find it best to make a personal one. Here's mine:

In dark of night, evil stirred  
a distant cry for help was heard.  
I heed the call, take up the fight,  
Nightwing flies on emerald light!"

Tris stared at him incredulously. "...You have got to be kidding."

Nightwing shrugged as he landed on the floor. "Believe it or not. Weird as it sounds, your oath will really just come to you. Anyway, give me a call if you have any questions."

Tris glanced at the cell phone that she was still getting used to using, sitting on her dresser. "How? I don't have your..." She turned back, to find the room was empty, "...number."

She stepped forward, glancing towards the window, when the cell phone rang. She quickly picked it up.

"Here's my number. *Click*" Tris stared at the phone.

'Ok then.'

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.24 (Welcome to Night Vale) / (Firefly) / (Super Smash Bros.) / (My Little Pony) | {Kalimaru} May 3rd, 2014…**

* * *

There is a large, floating, _white_ hand above the radio station. Its non-existent eyes scan, looking for something. _Perhaps_ , dear listeners, it is looking for _you._ Welcome to Night Vale.

 _*music starts then fades*_

Dear listeners. It would appear that our dry little city is playing host to a number of new guests. These guests range in description from normal citizens to adorable small horses and even to disembodied floating limbs. Most of these new guests are an amiable sort, going about their business and pleasantly interacting with the members of Night Vale's community. Some of these guests, particularly the small, _adorable_ horses I mentioned earlier, seem to be well versed in the rules of our community. When asked about these friendly foreign guests, the sheriff's Secret Police had this to say on the matter: "So long as the foreign entities show no signs of hostility towards the members of the Secret Police, they, the foreign entities, are welcome."

Seeing this as an opportunity, members of various clubs and committees have begun drafting the visitors into bizarre and unmentionable hazing rituals. Even our own radio station, from which I am currently broadcasting, has taken liberties to interview one of the visitors. Sitting with me now, in this tiny sound booth is one of the visitors. Would you care to tell us your name?

 _*a_ _throat is cleared*_ "Of course. My name is Malcolm Reynolds."

Good to have you on the air, Mr. Reynolds. If you could, could you please explain to the members of Night Vale's community where you came from? Many are curious to know.

 _*the sound of a door opening, some mumbling*_ "My apologies, but it would seem that I am not allowed to disclose that information Cecil."

Ah. Then could we know what it is you plan to do in Night Vale? The sheriff's Secret Police are hoping for a forewarning in case they will need to prep the dark chambers.

* _more whispering and mumbling*_ "I believe my associates and I will be taking a vacation in Night Vale. Perhaps take in the sites and sample some of the local cuisine."

Well that's good to hear, Malcolm. Say, before you go, do you know how we can get that large white hand away from the radio station antenna? It seems to be enhancing the radio waves so well that the citizens of Night Vale can hear our broadcast coming from anywhere they place a slightly used magazine. I normally wouldn't complain, but the City Council put a ban on hearing magazines last week, and we wouldn't want anyone having to pay the compulsory organs due to unorthodox broadcast.

* _some more mumbling*_ "We'll see what we can do." * _a door shuts*_

Very good. Well, you heard it here first Night Vale. Or, if you were listening from between the pages of the nearby news stand, you did not. But for now, dear listeners, the weather.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.25 (Middle Earth) | {Saphroneth} May 9th, 2014…**

* * *

"Dragon!" the guard shouted, running inside.

Thráin, son of Thrór, caught him by the arm as he went past. "Dragon?"

"Yes," he confirmed, eyes wide. "It has wings a hundred feet and more long, it is a baleful red and fire seethes within! It will kill us all!"

Thráin released him, and hefted his axe - the ancestral weapon of his bloodline. If he had to run, he would, but he would at least see the wyrm first.

A deep voice rumbled. "Excuse me?"

Thráin blinked. "Yes?" he called, warily. They said wyrms could enspell lesser beings with their voices...

"I'd like to talk to you about Eru."

With a thumping and cracking of stone, the dragon's head and fore torso came into view. It... seemed to be wearing a well-turned out shirt, like that some of the men of Dale wore, and had a pair of spectacles perched atop a terrible snout.

There was also a nametag, the size of a door, with the legend: Brother Smaug.

"I was wondering if you'd given your heart to Eru," he continued, in an all too calm voice. "Only those who have will be saved."

"You mean you'll kill the rest?" Thráin replied.

"No, I mean eventually. It's all in this book. May I come in?"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **2.26 (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) | {Crisis} May 9th, 2014…**

* * *

Splinter had been planning for this particular event in this particular baseline version for a long time now. He loved his adopted sons no less than if they were his own flesh and blood, but...

...it did not mean that he had no more love to give another child that was.

The current variant of Karai, the off-and-on ally of his sons in the realities she existed, charged him in fury, the lie of Oroku Saki, that Splinter had killed her mother, at the front of her mind.

"AAAAHHHHHH!" the kunoichi screamed in rage as she thrust her blade with all her might.

The blade was deflected gently to the side as Splinter stepped inside the teen's guard. Her gasp of terror became one of confusion when, instead of the ruthless blow she expected, she was instead greeted by a warm embrace.

"I loved your mother too much to ever do her harm," Splinter whispered in her ear. "And I despaired the day I thought you lost to me."

"Wha...?" Karai fumbled in confusion.

Splinter could see the surprise in Shredder's face begin to melt into fury and he knew it would be dangerous to press this further. He released his embrace and looked the teen girl in the eye. "Until we meet again, my daughter."

And with that, he took his leave.

 **—ox-oxo-xo—**

* * *

 **On loops and Loops:**

 **Small-'l' loops refer either to non-Infinite Loops situations (such as Groundhog Day mini-loops), or to single loop-iterations.**

 **Capital-'L' Loops refer to ongoing/permanent descriptors in context of the Infinite Loops. (So Loopers are Looping within their Loops, but may not be looping – ie. Awake – this loop.)**

* * *

2.1: And that's how a non-Egyptian god sharked Adminhood of the Stargate Branch.  
2.2: The subsequent lawsuit brought against Encyclopedia Brown by Ash Williams would draw to an abrupt halt when Leroy suddenly realised that his name for that loop-iteration was Jenkins. Which of course led to another lawsuit. Beware the puns, children…  
2.3: MREs: the bane of every expeditionary armed force. Everywhere. Everywhen. _Ever_.  
2.4: Totally not what it sounded like. Honest, officer!  
2.5: Both did eventually get Looping, btw.  
2.6: No, seriously. _**Don't**_.  
2.7: Wendy and Richard Pini are known for maintaining that the characters of ElfQuest are real to them. And given that 'Hub' loops are only ever Hub-'like'… Well, who knows?  
2.8: Trolling: not reserved solely for trolls.  
2.9: For a whole new definition of type-casting.  
2.10: It is a truism of the Infinite Loops that 'everything is looping'. It really isn't; SFW concerns re. SpaceBattles means that something like MGQ is right out there on the edge of what can be portrayed looping.  
2.11: [comment withheld due to gratuitous lassitude]  
2.12: Sometimes it's better to go with the goat— er, I mean flow.  
2.13: Hey, when they're dumb enough to give you warning…  
2.14: An eternity of infinite pest control and lasagna.  
2.15: Soul-bonding: in the Infinite Loops, a term more often applied to one's possessions than one's true love(s). And as far as I'm concerned, that's an improvement.  
2.16: At some time following this, Adminship was transferred to Hephaestus. Whether this is because Athena and co. succeeded or because they failed is up for conjecture.  
2.17: The toaster, incidentally, was native to _Red Dwarf_.  
2.18: Quite often, the line between cause-and-effect and plot armour can be pretty damn blurry. This tends to bite a lot of Loopers in a lot of uncomfortable places.  
2.19: Let's… _not_ speculate about what happened to Shadowfax, shall we?  
2.20: Some 'Stealth' Anchors don't have a choice about it.  
2.21: Fortunately, Selkirk would shortly find himself playing 'Robinson' a majority of the time; the companionable eye-candy was much appreciated. (FYI, _Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe_ was an 2012 Argentine stop-motion film dramatising the real-life inspiration for the Daniel Defoe classics.)  
2.22: Well. At least it wasn't obsessed about toast like the last one.  
2.23: _Divergent_ is far from the worst place for a Looper to call home. There's a _reason_ Horror is this fic's second genre-tag – and it's not even _this_ reason…  
2.24: Yeah, that was pretty much par for the course even before _Welcome to Night Vale_ started looping.  
2.25: …Not by the beards of our chinny-chin chins?  
2.26: And to think: if Splinter does this many, many, _many_ times over, she might one day just get to remember it afterwards!


	3. Twilight & SG-1: 1st thru 6th Threads

**Note:** Unlike the miscellaneous previous chapters, this one focuses on two specific fandoms – namely, Twilight Saga and Stargate SG-1. This is because there was enough material to justify such a format; as such, similar will be seen for various specific fandoms later on.

The first nine snips of Twilight Saga material were retrieved with permission from 'Clear Waters', **Saphroneth** 's unfinished compilation document located in their Sta . sh (suffix is /0iy9vd1ljmd). This is reflected in their dates.

* * *

 **3 TS1.1 prelude: (Admin Shenanigans) / (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

"Oh, dear," Loki said, reading the latest reports from one of his sons' Loops. "She's not doing well, is she?"

Fenrir growled, the sound tinged with sadness. "I know," he added, in a growling dialect of old Norse. "But can you blame her?"

"In all honesty... nope." Loki called up the Loop descriptor. "Horrible place."

"That messed-up parody of real lupine instincts is not helping either..." Fenrir shook himself. "I don't know what to do with her. We're supposed to at least help those we're responsible for, but by now..."

"Why not send her somewhere else?" Loki asked, tapping his chin with a slender finger. "Somewhere... safe."

"And force a Fused Loop over three hundred loops early for her first?" Fenrir shook his head, then frowned. Almost in spite of himself, he began calculating. "It'd take a lot of power..."

"Well, your brother's main Loops to monitor tend to be relatively normal." Loki shrugged.

Fenrir laughed. "Yes, I can just see her in Valdemar."

"Not... precisely where I was thinking of..."

The gigantic wolf deity blinked, then snorted. "You don't mean..."

Loki's grin answered him.

* * *

 **[3 TS1.1 is continued as MLP Loops 38.6 (40th FFN chapter). But here's the epilogue for it, from the next loop afterward…]**

* * *

Leah's eyes opened, showing her the ceiling of her room.

Her room at La Push.

For a moment, she wondered if it was a dream – then she concentrated, and the bracelet appeared in a little flicker of light.

She smiled happily, then put it away again. Not a dream.

Standing up, she contemplated exactly how to do things this time.

—ox-oxo-xo—

As the three new vampires emerged from the treeline, they arrayed themselves so that one of the males was in front of the others. Clearly, Bella reasoned, he must be the leader.

And their eyes... were red. Sinister red.

Then something very large and silvery-grey shot past her, cannoned into the other male, and tore him apart.

Bella could hear Alice's exclamation of surprise, and tried to work out what that could mean. Could it be that Alice hadn't seen this?

Beside her, Edward muttered something about being unable to 'read' the newcomer.

While that had been going on, the enormous thing – creature – wolf turned whiplash-fast and pounced on the female vampire.

Glittering venom and chunks of vampire went flying.

Several crowded seconds later, and all that was left of the newcomers was debris.

Then the wolf snorted in satisfaction, and... flowed into the form of a young adult woman. Wearing nothing at all.

Bella gasped. Esme put her hand over Edward's eyes.

"Hey!" the woman shouted – by her features, she was one of the Quilettes. A werewolf? "Can one of you burn these tossers? I don't have a lighter."

With that, she blurred again, and loped off.

Bella could swear she was laughing.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.2 (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

Edward Cullen silently scaled the wall of the Swan residence, finding purchase points on the bare brick and mortar. Within seconds, he reached Bella's window and clambered inside.

Once he was in, and had been in for at least two minutes, Leah padded out of the treeline on velvet pads.

Delicately threading her huge body between the remnants of a flowerbed, she sat directly below Bella's window, looked up, and opened her jaws.

One way or another, this was going to be hilarious.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.3 (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

"I see you're back," Charlie said, giving Edward a look. "You broke my little girl's heart when you left her, you know."

Bella clutched onto Edward's arm.

Charlie sighed. "Well, you're back now. I suppose what matters is that Isabella is happy. Just – a warning, sonny."

Edward raised an eyebrow.

"You hurt her again – or abuse her, or anything which looks too much like abuse... well, Bella, now's as good a time as any to tell you. We got a new dog."

He whistled.

Something enormous, far too big to be a dog, lumbered out of the front room and squeezed into the hallway.

Charlie reached up and scratched the canine, just under her collar (bright pink with yellow flowers on it). "Just saying."

"Chief Swan, are you threatening me?" Edward asked.

"No. Just promising."

The 'dog' growled happily, leaning into the scratch, then fixed Edward with a cool regard that contained the solemn pledge of potential violence.

"Same for that Jacob kid, too," Charlie added as an afterthought.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.4 (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

Leah had planned for dozens of loops for this.

Seven spending all her free time researching ancient history. Four more seeking out vampire covens associated with the Volturi. Six just reading up on military hardware of the modern age.

In two, she had actually joined the military. (Marines once, Rangers once. Active combat deployment had been... _interesting_ , with moments of sheer terror.)

And, last of all, no fewer than five where she'd screwed up and things had gone wrong. Fatally wrong.

"They will see you now, Miss."

—ox-oxo-xo—

Leah walked into the central audience chamber of the Volturi, controlling her physical reactions as best she could.

At least by now she could read vampiric body language... and the shields Diamond had taught her prevented them from reading her thoughts. So, from one point of view, it was all nice and even.

Reaching the centre, she stopped and bowed precisely low enough that her head dipped below those of the sitting vampires, then straightened. "Aronaro of Pylos. Marcus of Velathri. And Gaius Claudius Marcellus Maior, Proconsul."

As she had hoped, that caused a stir.

Aro smiled, putting his hands together and applauding. "Very impressive! I had thought some of those names lost forever – or at least that their bearers are still around!" He tittered. "Well done, well done indeed. But I believe you have the advantage of us...?"

 _Well, that's one down_ , Leah thought to herself. The last-but-one time she'd tried this, the guards had already been called. "Do you want the anglo name, or the use-name?"

The Mycenaean vampire considered her. "Let's have both."

"Leah Clearwater. Also known as girl-who-is-a-bitch."

Marcus pointed at her. "There is no way that that is a name."

"Come now, Marcus," Aro said, smiling disarmingly. His red eyes gleamed. "Don't you remember old Augustus Caesar, Son of the God? Granted, he was quite the politician..."

"Get to the point," Caius said shortly.

Leah nodded. "I have an offer, a request, and a warning. Let's do them in reverse."

"By all means," Aro agreed.

 _That's two._

"Are you aware that human weaponry has reached the point that it is able to kill you?" she asked.

Most of the vampires laughed.

"Dear me, we went through this last century," Aro said, a faraway look in his eyes. "I've never yet run into a human weapon that could be aimed fast enough and still hurt us."

Leah reached into her small bag, one which she'd been allowed through with without even a search, and pulled out a large metal object.

"This is the shell for the main cannon on an American aircraft called the Thunderbolt II."

Aro gave it a cursory look over. "Boring."

"Well, it does fire them at three times the speed of sound and at seventy a second..." Leah added casually.

Sadly, she still hadn't been able to work out a way to steal an Avenger autocannon itself. By her calculations, if she braced herself against a hill, she might be able to actually hold it on target with main strength...

"Oh?" Aro looked at the shell again, this time more closely. "Well, interesting."

"Make of that what you will," Leah said, shrugging. "Myself, I wouldn't annoy anyone with an air force. Vampires aren't great at flying..."

"What _are_ you?" the former Roman Consul asked, sniffing. "You're not vampire, I can smell your blood, but... hm, there's something more..."

"Well, I can make it part of the warning." Leah paused. "By the way, do you have spare clothing here?"

"This I must see." Aro waggled his eyebrows.

Leah answered with a tight grin, then erupted outwards into her full, one-ton werewolf glory.

Every vampire in the room reacted instantly, going to high alert and preparing to spring.

Leah sat down on her haunches, shaking off the remnants of her clothes, and shook her head. "Sorry. But the looks on your faces..."

"A werewolf?" Aro nodded to himself. "I've not met any kind of shape changer since... oh, Peter Stubbe. Do you remember him? Caius, you _must_ remember him."

Marcus sighed. "We are getting off track. _Again._ "

"Oh, allow me my fun," Aro said with a pout.

"Right." Leah fought the urge to swallow – this was now into unknown territory. Wolfing out had been the cause of _three_ previous blood-and-venom baths. "Now the request. Given that human weapons have become a danger – if nothing else, they have flamethrowers – and that it is possible to survive not only on animal blood but on blood from blood packs, have you considered transitioning to... well... not killing people?"

"Hm." Aro tapped his chin. "Oh, I see! Girl-who-is-a-bitch! You're a female werewolf, now I see it!"

Leah shrugged, settling herself more comfortably. "Yep. Now, the offer. Basically, if you agree to the request, then I co-operate fully and completely with you and your plans to fulfil said request."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.5 (How To Train Your Dragon) / (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

"Oh..." Hiccup swallowed what he was about to say, and put his head in his hands. "This is not going to go well. Loki's fetlocks, the Twilight-verse again?"

Toothless padded over to sit next to him. _:At least we're not Cullens.:_

"Are you ever going to leave that form?" Hiccup asked, looking the large wolf over.

 _:That or my base form. But it's chilly, I like fur.:_

"Don't you normally have a core temperature in excess of eighty degrees celsius?"

 _:So?:_ Toothless shrugged his forelimbs. _:I'm incognito.:_

"As a one-tonne wolf."

 _:Better than a dragon.:_ Toothless paused. _:During the daytime, at any rate.:_

"Okay, let's see where we are in the story. I can't believe I'm replacing Jacob Black..."

 _:Look on the bright side. Maybe Astrid is Bella. If she is, then she can kill Edward right off and everything will be fine.:_

"If you make a Team Hiccup t-shirt..."

Leah cracked her knuckles.

Right.

She was, once more, ready to handle the whole 'Sam' business.

Trying to prevent him from imprinting had failed. Trying to reason with him had failed.

One particularly self destructive loop, long ago, even forcibly clamping down on her own phasing until her soul felt like it would implode had failed.

But punching Sam in the face when he Imprinted on Emily? That had at least the merit of satisfaction.

She stood, turned towards La Push, and stopped dead at the sight in front of her.

Her brother in wolf form – far too early in the loop for him to be phasing – next to...

 _Aha!_ she thought, as she realized that the person in front of her must be another Looper. At any rate, it certainly wasn't Jacob...

"Excuse me?" she said, straightening up. "Are you a Looper?"

Both the boy replacing Jacob and her brother – though, come to think of it, he didn't have quite Seth's mannerisms – turned to face her.

"This place has Loopers now?" the boy asked rhetorically. After a moment he chuckled. "Okay, hi. I'm Hiccup. Who are you?"

"I'm Leah Clearwater. I'm told I'm the local Anchor."

"I hope you'll forgive me if I... reserve judgement?" Hiccup asked, chuckling nervously. "I've been here before, and..."

He stopped again, then turned to the wolf – who Leah was now certain was not Seth Clearwater. "You actually read those books?"

The wolf looked down, ears flattening.

"Okay. Toothless says you're supposed to be at least sane. Which, by my experiences here, makes you all but unique."

"That's not... quite fair," Leah temporized. "Emmett isn't too bad once you get to know him, and Charlie can be awesome."

"The police chief?" The wolf nodded to him. "Yeah, he was remarkably understanding last time... considering."

"Considering what?" Leah asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Considering that I made a Warthog strike on the Cullens' house within two days of Awakening here," Hiccup replied.

The wolf waved a paw.

"Oh, sorry. This is Toothless. He's normally a dragon." Hiccup shrugged. "Apparently this time he's a wolf for the duration, or until he gets bored, whichever is first."

Leah nodded, then shifted.

Hiccup started slightly. "Whoa. Okay, that's neat."

"I had mixed feelings, at first," Leah said with a shrug.

 _:Okay, how come you can talk?:_ came a mental voice. From context, Leah assumed it was this Toothless.

"It's a long story," she answered aloud. "It involves some badly miscopied instincts, a pale yellow pegasus and a slightly flubbed casting of a spell called Origin of Species."

"Right, so you know the Equestrians." Hiccup nodded, and sat down. "It's been a while since I met them."

"They..." Leah's voice caught. "Yeah, they basically saved my sanity."

Hiccup was quiet for a bit.

"Right!" he said with a slightly forced grin. "I've got about a hundred kilos of plastique going spare in my subspace pocket; what do you say we find out the explosion resistance of a vampire?"

"You seem... a bit violent compared to Fluttershy and the others..." Leah observed, pacing alongside the newcomers as they started towards Forks.

"I blame being a Viking," Hiccup replied with a shrug. "I have the mind of a scientist and engineer, the body of a geek with good genes and the culture of some boisterous drunkards who solve problems with their fists."

—ox-oxo-xo—

"Well, here we go," Leah observed quietly.

They'd arrived as the main event was already in progress. Sam was trying to talk Emily round, Emily was reacting with shock, and the rest of the tribe were standing by.

Hiccup's eyes widened, then narrowed. Next to him, Toothless began to growl almost inaudibly.

The sound drew attention – most of the tribe turned towards what, as far as they were concerned, was three of the tribe's normal weres.

 _:This is later than you normally start, isn't it?:_ Toothless 'pathed.

"Yeah, by a good while."

"Right. Right." Hiccup walked forwards.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Sam was by now almost snarling. Emily told him to get lost, and, finally, his control snapped.

Growling more like a wolf than a human, he pulled back his hand to strike her, and—

A hand slipped around his wrist, and pulled at such an angle that he went flipping onto his back. His breath left in a woosh of air, leaving him gasping.

"Wataa," Hiccup said, deadpan. "You know, I've never understood why so many super-strong people never bother with martial arts..."

Leah coughed, trying to hold in laughter.

"She is my mate!" Sam wheezed indignantly. "I have Imprinted on her!"

 _:He's actually engaged to Leah at this point, just so you know...:_ Toothless supplied.

"Huh. So, what happens to Leah?"

Sam looked lost. "What about her?"

Hiccup kicked him in the ribs. "Okay, that tells me exactly what kind of person you are. What do you think, Leah?"

"Sam, you suck," Leah called. Several members of the tribe spun to stare – both because Leah was talking in wolf form, and because Leah was a wolf at all.

The loop having started later than normal, she hadn't engineered her 'official' first phase yet.

"Wait..." Hiccup blanched. "You were the alpha male, Leah was engaged to you so she was the alpha female, and I kicked your ass. Does that make me the new alpha male?"

Leah coughed again.

"That's not how alphas work..." Quil muttered.

"Do you people even study wolves?" Hiccup shrugged. "Oh well. Sorry, Leah, but it's going to have to be in name only." _:And Toothless? Never mention this to Astrid.:_

 _:How much is it worth?_ Toothless asked innocently.:

 _:One sea bass.:_

 _:Sold!:_

—ox-oxo-xo—

"Excuse me," Hiccup asked, slapping Edward companionably on the shoulder.

With a hiss, Edward spun – then stopped, blinking at the sight in front of him.

The scion of Billy Black – assuredly a werewolf – flanked by two more, was enough to make him wary. As was how this werewolf in human form seemed to be immune to his telepathy...

"So, I was just wondering..." Hiccup shrugged. "What were you planning to do?"

Edward frowned. "I was going to reveal myself, exposing vampires to the world, so that the Volturi would kill me – because I cannot live without Bella."

"Okay, that's stupid." Hiccup facepalmed. "On three levels."

"First," the wolf to his right said, grinning, "Who's going to tell that you're a vampire? Vampires in legends don't care for the sun, flee holy objects, and die when staked. They don't sparkle. You'll look like someone whose little sister replaced his shower gel with glitter."

 _:Second,:_ added a sardonic telepathic voice, _:you plan on making the Volturi kill you because you exposed the secret – if any of this mad plan worked. And that would mean that they'd also have to kill the thousands of people who would see you.:_

Edward blinked slowly.

"And, third, she's not dead." Hiccup held up a taser. "You're about to be, though."

The eternally-young vampire laughed. "You think that's going to kill me? Vampires can't be harmed by bullets – our skin turns any weapon."

Hiccup pulled the trigger, sending the two taser prongs into Edward's shoulder.

There was a loud bang.

—ox-oxo-xo—

"Well, that worked," Leah commented, as Toothless shifted to dragon and set the powdered remains on fire. "I can't believe he didn't notice the plastic explosive."

"Yeah, I try."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.6 (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

"Okay, you know what?" Leah said abruptly, cutting into the deliberations of the rest of the pack. "Screw all of you, and the horses you rode in on."

Sam blinked. "What?"

"Save it." Leah drew her hand across her throat. "I don't have to listen to you, Sam Uley, and I'm not going to any more. I'm going to college."

"But..." Jacob looked confused. "It's your duty to protect the tribe. To protect the reservation."

"Yeah, and that worked out _really_ well when a werewolf attacked my cousin, didn't it?" Leah breathed heavily for a few seconds.

"Stop it," Sam said, frowning at her. "I know you're jealous of Emily, but you have to accept that she's my mate."

"I have," Leah said through gritted teeth. "She's become a Stepford wife in your little Stepford pack, but she's looked me in the eye and said that she wants to stay here – so that's fine. Really. But you're not the boss of me, so I'm leaving."

"This is typical of Leah," one of the others – Quil? - said in an aside. "Running away from everything."

Leah shook her head, and walked off in the direction of town.

"Leah!" Sam shouted after her. "You're not leaving your duties! That's an order!"

The Anchor just kept walking.

"Come back here NOW!"

The pack felt the pressure of an alpha order – even not directed at them, a few shuffled closer to Sam to calm their instincts.

Leah stuck her fist out behind her, middle finger raised, and pumped it. Then blurred into wolf and loped off at speed.

—ox-oxo-xo—

"What to do, what to do..." Leah flipped through the course booklet, then closed her eyes and flipped to a random page. "Huh. Well, looks like I'm becoming an architect this loop."

Seriously. If the Cullens _had_ to keep going through the same part of their lives over and over again, they could at least get college degrees with it instead of repeating _high school_.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.7 (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

"Down!" Leah shouted, and enacted the martial arts routine known as _throw self at planet._

Bullets pocked the wall above her as some unknown assailant rattled off half a magazine of assault rifle ammo.

A voice she recognized shouted – yelled, rather than screamed, so it couldn't be too dangerous. But by the sound of it, Buckeye wouldn't be playing poker any time soon.

 _Ambushes suck._

More gunfire chewed at the lintel of the window she was hiding under.

USMC PFC Leah Clearwater sniffed once, listened carefully, and pinpointed the likely ambush position.

 _Okay, here we go._

Shifting while part of the military was a definite no-no – Leah didn't want to either become the subject of intense scientific study or have to kill people during an escape attempt, and the chance that she'd stop something anti-tank with her body and unceremoniously reset the Loop was a concern as well – but being a werewolf had advantages anyway. She sprinted to the next window and snapped off two bursts, at least one of which connected, before ducking away ahead of a spray of gunfire. She got back to the first window before they'd finished shooting at the second, and two more bursts later the gunfire abruptly stopped.

"You okay, Pocahontas?" someone asked over the squad push, and she exhaled.

"Fine, sarge. Two insurgents down in the building opposite. Who's hurt?"

Sometimes, she wished there was _anyone_ else in her Loop who was both sane and willing to spar; but in the absence of that, she had to get combat experience somehow. Waiting to get it in the normal course of the loop from the _one_ fight she could be sure of was incredibly inefficient.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.8 (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…

* * *

"...and here we have Leah Clearwater, author of _Certain Reservations_ , the bestselling book which takes a frank look at the Reservation system from the inside. Leah, it's good to have you on the show."

"Thanks," Leah said, smiling. "But I do have a confession of sorts to make."

The anchorman looked a bit confused. "You do? I have to admit, this isn't exactly normal behaviour from my guests." He cracked a smile. "Usually they tell-all in an expose a few months after appearing on the show, and get to come on again to explain how terribly they've made their mistake."

He gave her a stern look. "You did write the book yourself, didn't you?"

"Of course, Principal," she replied so promptly that some of the studio audience had to stifle laughter. "It's... something else. This is probably going to sound insane for a bit, so I'd like to ask that you hear me out for... at least a minute. Then if I still sound crazy, sure, call the security and have me taken off."

"Can't argue with that," the host said, shrugging and winking at the camera."

"Right." Leah took a deep breath. "There's something I left out of chapter two of my book, about the reservation I grew up on. I mentioned the way it's still largely dominated by men in all the important spots, and how my sister's husband introduced himself to her by slapping her in the face... but I didn't explain _why._ "

"You certainly speculated at length," the host followed along. "And I'd just like to say that I really tore up inside at your frank account of that little incident."

"Right." Leah blushed slightly. "But... okay, here we go. Several of the men of my tribe are werewolves."

The room went deathly quiet.

"I'm... sorry?" the anchorman asked after a couple of seconds.

"Sam, Jacob, Seth, Quil... all of them are werewolves." Leah sighed. "I know I look crazy, but I can prove it. So am I."

There was a moment of morphic uncertainty, and then Leah exploded outwards into the form of a half-tonne wolf.

"Jesus Christ!" the host shouted, getting up from behind his desk and staggering backwards.

Leah laid her paws on the ground and carefully placed her muzzle on top of them, projecting a non-threatening air. "Werewolves are real. So are vampires – and they've been preying on us, on humans and werewolves both, for centuries." She turned directly to camera one and cocked her head, winking. "I love live chat shows."

After a few tense moments, the host slowly returned to his seat. "Wow. Well... I don't know what to say." He gulped, breathing deeply. "I certainly wasn't expecting _this._ "

With a lupine grin – carefully calculated to _not_ show her teeth – Leah shrugged. "I assume the rest of the interview isn't going to be about my book?"

 _Right_ , she thought grimly. _Masquerade thoroughly smashed. Let's see how things go from here._

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.9 (My Little Pony) / (Twilight) / (Spice and Wolf) | {Saphroneth}** November 25th, 2013…  
 **[Note: also MLP Loops 51.4 (55** **th FFN** **chapter)]**

* * *

Twilight felt the customary moment of disorientation.

 _Okay, so, taking stock._

First off, she was human. Female, which was nice, but with long black hair which only vaguely approximated her normal mane. That was annoying.

She was on the limber of a covered wagon, with a horse hitched to it. _Sapient horse? No, earth-mundane variant. Pity, it'd be nice to have a companion on the road._

That thought touched something off.

 _Ah, the loop memories._ So she _did_ have a companion. In fact—

The head of a Northwest Coast Indian woman poked out of the wagon, two triangular ears perched atop it. "Hi, Twilight."

"Leah, it's good to see you." Twilight smiled. "Any idea where we are?"

"I think so, actually..." Leah paused, thinking. "There were a few loops where I read anything remotely connected to werewolves I could get my paws on, which seems to have been a good choice given where I keep ending up. Remind me to tell you the time I was Moony once. But anyway, this looks like the world of Spice and Wolf."

"That's handy." Twilight said, nodding. "What do you remember?"

"Well, loop memories wise, I'm the local harvest goddess – wolf in form, this is my human guise." Leah waggled her ears, winning a giggle from Twilight at her expression. "We're off to find my homeland, I think?"

"Dovetails with what I know," Twilight assured her. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, the books could have been first year economics history course material at any college you'd care to name."

A mischievous expression came over her face. "When I taught undergrads once, I did actually use them as course material. That was fun."

"So you've done economics?" Twilight took a moment to make sure they were on the correct road, and turned back to the fellow Anchor. "Somehow, I wouldn't have thought..."

"Hey, unlike some people my home Loop doesn't have crazy super martial arts or hermetic magic or something like that." Leah pulled a small notebook out of the air, and passed it over. "So, for training, I often go for the more... structured choice."

Twilight opened it. "History... Politics... Economics... Architecture... Leah, is this a list of degrees you have?" She flipped through the book, discovering there were at least sixty entries. "That's pretty impressive."

"Yeah, what can I say." Leah shrugged, grinning. "So, how would you improve the economy of this place, given what you know?"

She shrugged again. "Hey, the books are all about discussing economics, why not live up to it?"

—ox-oxo-xo—

Twilight shook her head, hiding a grin. "I'm a bit negative towards thieves, you know."

"Yeah?" The leader of the bandits chuckled, his men echoing him. "Well, we'll just have to cope with the weight of your disapproval."

"Right, right." Twilight raised her voice slightly. "Loss Prevention to the front desk, please."

There was a snarl, and a one-tonne wolf erupted from the covered side of the cart.

"You're fixing that!" Twilight shouted after Leah, as the latter put the fear of Her into the bandit gang. "Leather doesn't grow on trees!"

"No, it grows on bulls," Leah agreed readily, padding back and shifting. "Where's the sewing gear?"

"I don't know, I never need to use it," Twilight replied. "You're the one who keeps wrecking her clothes."

"Hey, if you ever find a way to make a tunic not explode when your body mass goes up by a factor of fifteen, I'm interested." Leah threw a blanket around herself. "Right, can we stop for a bit?"

"Only if you go hunting." Twilight shrugged. "We were planning on stopping in a tavern, if you remember, but if we're going to sleep rough..."

"Sure, sure. Anyone'd think I didn't just save the cargo..."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.10 (Harry Potter) / (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** January 30th  & February 1st, 2014…

* * *

Harry woke up.

He was, as it happened, in his cupboard – his usual place of Awakening.

 _So, what this time?_ he wondered. _Maybe I mess with Dumbles by pretending to be an emo?  
_

As he discarded that idea because it was stupid – though come to think of it, he could probably get some traction by imitating Snape closely enough to break the old bat's mind – there was a knocking on the door.

That was new. Harry listened intently as Vernon clumped to the door.

"Hello," a pleasant female voice said. "May I come in?"

Vernon paused a moment, then let the woman in.

"Right. Now, where is my son-in-law?"

 _Oho_ , Harry thought to himself.

"What do you mean, son in law?" Vernon asked, sounding like he was turning at least towards red. "We've never seen you before!"

"I wouldn't expect you to, Mr. Dursley," she said, still in that same pleasant voice. "I'm a friend of the _other_ side of the family. To be precise, I am one of James Potter's school friends."

"WHAT?"

In response to the bellow, the woman emitted a deep growl. Harry more-or-less ignored it, but by the sudden thump it had driven Vernon to his knees.

"Now, now, that's not polite. Allow me to elaborate. My name is Leah Lupin."

The name nagged at Harry's memory from somewhere. He absently noticed Petunia shouting something, and then another one of those deep growls – which made sense, if the woman was a werewolf.

Several minutes of Dursley grumbling followed, occasionally climbing to screeches or bellows which were cut off like a knife by Remus' replacement. Eventually, apparently tiring of the game, she grabbed the handle of the cupboard under the stairs and ripped it off.

Not the handle. The door.

"Hey, kid," she said, grinning. She looked vaguely native American, but Harry got distracted by memories of Salem co-eds before he could get anything more specific. "Let's blow this joint."

—ox-oxo-xo—

"So, you're a Looper?" Harry asked that afternoon, in the usual run-down Lupin flat.

"Yep," Leah replied, flashing a grin. "Leah Clearwater, usually. I'm from... well, you'd probably know it as the Twilight universe."

Harry winced. "Ouch."

"Yeah..." She shrugged. "I had a bad few centuries. Anyway, I know that you probably had some kind of plan, but since I'm an Anchor I wasn't sure you were Awake so I thought I'd save you just in case."

"Makes sense." Harry sat back on the ratty sofa. "Any plan on your part?"

"Well..." Leah stopped, and grinned. "Rescue Sirius, for a start. I seem to recall he was quite the roguishly handsome guy in school."

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Don't judge me," Leah said, raising a hand. "I have a pathological aversion to most men from my baseline. I have to get nookie where it's available, probably willing, and free of entanglements or bizarre destiny-based hookups."

"No argument from me," Harry assured her. "Anything else?"

"Yeah." She shot him a glance. "I don't know quite how werewolves work around here, but from my baseline – which carries over – I can turn into a one-ton, talking, fully sapient apex predator which could go three rounds with a Challenger Tank... and probably win. So, you up for my technically adopting you?"

"Pardon?"

"'I'll tell my mom!' is a lot more convincing when the mom can do that," Leah pointed out.

* * *

"Just you wait, Potter," Malfoy said, hands clenched. "When Father hears about this—"

"You're going to tell your _father_ about an argument at school?" Harry interrupted. "Okay, sure. But I'm telling my mother. Maybe they can talk it out."

"You mean the one who adopted you? Because your real mother's dead," Malfoy taunted. "She'll get hers."

—ox-oxo-xo—

"So..." Lucius said, nervously. "My son mentioned a disagreement at school?"

"I did hear about that from Harry," the huge wolf agreed, passing him a cup of tea with one foreleg. "It sounds like just another of those arguments schoolboys always had. I remember James and Sirius getting into _so_ much trouble..." She chuckled. "Sugar?"

Lucius adjusted his collar, sweating.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.11 (Twilight) | {Saphroneth}** February 1st, 2014…

* * *

Bella carefully placed her daughter on Jacob's back—

"Okay, that is IT."

Leah stomped over.

"Jacob. You are a coward."

The huge alpha turned to her, snarling.

"Don't even fucking _try_ to explain this away, Jacob!" she said forcefully. "Look behind you. Those wolves there? Half of them are underage – two of them are still in grade school! You made them come here, and now you're going to make them fight and die to give you and your precious imprintee time to run for your life."

Jacob transformed back, catching Renesmee gently as she slipped off his changing body. "You don't understand the bond involved with an Imprint. I know you're jealous—"

"This isn't even related to that!" Leah pointed back at the rest of the wolves, the ones still in Sam's pack. "Look, I hate Sam. I hate Quil. I hate the whole Imprint thing. But Quil's imprinted on someone who's... what, three? And he's staying to fight. Sick as the whole thing is, he's protecting his imprint by _fighting_ for her. And you, you fucking coward, are going to run away while ordering us to die for you. Some destined leader."

She rounded on Bella. "And as for _you_ , you bitch. You're all so happy about how you're going to sacrifice your life for your daughter – which is admirable, I suppose... but you're going to sacrifice all _our_ lives too!"

"Everyone here came to protect us because my daughter is wonderful!" Bella protested.

"Or, in the case of most of the redskins, because they literally can't refuse an order." Leah snapped her fingers, producing a slim wooden stick. "Okay, screw this for a game of soldiers. _Fiendfyre._ "

A horde of howling wolves – wolves made of living flame – spread out, pouncing and devouring. Aro barely managed to blink before one fell on him, reducing him to cinders, and from then they attacked vampire after vampire with increasing speed.

Six roaring, blazing seconds later, and Bella was standing in a field of ash with only werewolves, Carlisle and her daughter for company.

Leah flicked the wand. "Huh. Guess Sirius was right – that _is_ neat."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.12 (InuYasha) / (Twilight) | {Star Fata}** January 2nd, 2014…

* * *

 **A Miko and her Werewolf**

Kagome blinked as an unfamiliar bedroom materialized around her. Checking her loop memories, she realized it was probably a Fused Loop rather than a Variant.

She was American, and had just moved from her mother's house in Phoenix to her father's. Her mother was a teacher, although she was between jobs as her new husband was likely to transfer soon. Phil was a baseball player. Her father, Charlie Swan, was a police Chief in…

Realisation hit harder than Genma Saotome's infamous stop sign. "Please Fenrir-sama," she pleaded, eyes screwing shut. "Not Twilight."

It had been a while since she'd read the book – the general consensus among Loopers was that at least it wasn't Eiken, but thank the Admins that it wasn't a common Variant. She'd only heard of two occasions there'd been a Twilight Variant actually, and one of those had quickly been ended in favour of Eiken.

She'd rather not do the same until it was absolutely necessary. Which also meant avoiding being killed, wasn't the vampire obsessed with Swan's blood? And not in the semi-philosophical Buffy way of 'it's always about the blood', but one-step-from-writing-odes-in-it-about-it way.

Before she could start either brainstorming or panicking, Charlie knocked on the door. At least, she hoped it was Charlie.

"Come in," Kagome called out.

Her current father opened the door and leaned against the doorway. "So," he began awkwardly. He was dressed for bed, looking like he'd almost been ready to go to sleep but decided to come talk to her instead. She was fairly sure that hadn't happened in the book.

"So," Kagome replied. "You're Awake this late?" If he didn't catch her meaning, she'd continue with his early mornings as Chief of Police. A weak excuse, but he wouldn't have any reason to suspect her.

He relaxed. "Awake and ready. Welcome to Forks."

"Thank you. I've heard a lot about it," she replied. Not much of it good.

Charlie seemed to guess at what she was thinking and snorted. "It's not too bad a Loop. Fairly quiet though, if we don't get involved with the Cullens."

"I could do with some quiet." Kagome laughed. "My usual Loop is in the Sengoku Jidai – the Warring States period of Japan," she explained.

Charlie nodded in understanding. "That sounds like a stressful one. Let me know if you need anything. Our usual anchor is Leah Clearwater, and from my memories she should be around here. I don't think you're our only visitor though, Jacob isn't Billy's son this time."

Kagome nodded, hoping it was someone she knew – preferably not Kouga. She hadn't seen Cloud Strife in a while... "Anything major I need to worry about, Charlie?" she asked.

"Edward's mind-reading and Alice's visions," he stated immediately. "She'll get 'concerned' if you think too long about too many otherworldly stunts, since they'd only show up if they were possible, and if they're possible you have to be either dealt with or kept an eye on. Even if Edward can't read your mind, you'll slip under the radar so long as you don't pull anything big."

"And so long as Edward doesn't snap and rip my throat out," Kagome pointed out dryly.

Charlie smiled. "Leah traded something a few loops back for a formula that can change your scent – I don't know how it works and I don't want to – but I do know how to use it. It'll do if you can't think of anything else."

"Have you used it before?" Kagome asked.

"A few times," he answered. "But it's been known to backfire – once, our visitor ended up as Rosalie's singer." And with that, he said goodnight and left the room.

"Huh." Kagome mused. "Okay, let's try and avoid attracting any vampires. I'm sure I can come up with something…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

"Hey," the girl – Leah Clearwater, Harry and Sue's daughter Seth's sister – greeted.

Yasha Black shrugged. "Hey yourself."

He wasn't a big fan of Fused Loops – sure, he could probably use this loop to do the High School thing, maybe stock up on ramen or other foods if he felt like it, but most of what he could learn here wouldn't be useful back in their own Loop. Besides, he liked his Loop.

God this was going to be boring.

"So, what's there to do around here?" he asked Leah. Hopefully she was one of the local Loopers, and not just being weird.

She smirked at him. "This time next year you're going to be a werewolf."

Yasha blinked. Okay, that one was new.

* * *

"So," Kagome began, hand linked with Yasha's. "Want to go to the dance with me?"

Yasha laughed. "I guess we've never done that before. Sure, why not?"

Kagome slowed down to look at the ocean. They were far enough away from the group that even Inuyasha's ears would have had trouble making out their words, so long as they didn't start shouting. Even the Wolves wouldn't be able to eavesdrop easily.

"How've you been?" she asked, pulling him down to sit on the sand.

He humoured her. "Alright I guess. Leah's helping me prepare for the wolf thing, but it's difficult because we don't really know what's going to happen if I Shift as an Alpha, or if I end up as one of the pack. If I end up with those messed up instincts, it's going to get ugly fast."

Kagome frowned. "And I'd help you," she swore. "I don't like the idea of you being enslaved that way."

"Yeah, at least you stuck with that damn rosary," Yasha joked.

She punched him in the shoulder – not exactly lightly either. "Jerk."

He laughed. "True though."

"Is not," Kagome protested. She shifted slightly. "Well, only a little. And only the first few loops."

"Feh. First fifty at least."

She blinked in confusion. "First few, first fifty, not much difference."

Inuyasha shook his head. "Anchors."

"Speaking of," Kagome began. "What's Leah like?"

"Alright. She's still quite new, but her first fuse was in Equestria with the full set Awake."

At first, that sounded like a calm fuse. Then, Kagome remembered who else was in that Loop. Trixie, whose fondness of explosives was legendary among Loopers. Pinkie Pie, who once conquered the Universe with Parties. A host of others, each with their own niche talent and millennia of discovery behind their talents.

"That must have been interesting," she noted.

* * *

Kagome didn't hiss as she felt her wards activate- if only because she didn't want the creepy bastard to hear her. She counted to ten, and felt rather than saw the world flash pink. There was a distinctly male yelp and a muffled crash from the direction of the forest.

Charlie called out from his room. "Edward again?"

"Yup. Tenth day in a row," she answered, rolling over in her bed.

"Isn't there something you can do to make him stop?" Charlie demanded, only half joking. "It's not funny any more."

She rolled onto her back. "Only thing I can think of is to remove the memory charm from the wards. And that would bring the rest of them down on my head!"

She could practically hear Charlie's sigh through the walls. "Dammit. I'm calling Leah and that boyfriend of yours in the morning. Maybe if they're hanging around more often Cullen will take a hike."

Kagome settled back into her pillow. "Sounds like a plan. Good night Charlie."

"Night."

—ox-oxo-xo—

Leah sighed. "Plan C time. Dammit, how did watching Cullen get blasted through the air get boring?"

Charlie handed her another beer from his recliner, ignoring the vampire staggering upright from where he'd fallen. Cullen wouldn't see them under the concealment field in any case, and he'd seen the same thing over a dozen times already. "It's been a month. Anything would get boring. So, any plans for college this time?"

Leah grinned at her sometimes stepfather. "Not this time, I'd rather hang out with other Loopers while I can. I'm thinking of winning the lottery next time and spending some time abroad, maybe do the foreign studies thing."

"Kagome says Toudai is an excellent university." Charlie volunteered. "What are you planning on studying?"

Leah leaned back into her own seat. She loved her father, but it was nice to have a parental figure in the Loops. Especially one as steady as Charlie.

* * *

Thanks to time spent in vicinity with a Cullen, however briefly as the intruder was thrown away from the Swan Household, Inuyasha phased earlier than Jacob would have.

Thankfully for him, he hadn't phased into a Twilight Wolf.

"Damn Inuyasha." Kagome grinned, healing Leah's arm where his claws had caught her as he'd shifted in the middle of their spar. "You look like a smaller version of Sesshomaru's true form."

"But with your own ears," Leah interjected, flipping through an entirely too familiar manga with her free hand. "It's cute."

Inuyasha growled.

Smaller was relative of course – Inuyasha in his new form was easily as tall as Kagome's shoulder, if not Leah's, much taller than even an Alpha Twilight wolf. Cute was also relative – even with the white fur and the 'adorable' ears, any sane person would have run in the opposite direction screaming bloody murder.

There wasn't a sane Looper in all of Yggdrasil.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 TS1.13 (Twilight) / (Attack on Titan) | {Crossoverpairinglover} June 26th, 2014…**

* * *

Leah Clearwater, one of the only native Loopers to one of the unofficial Punishment Loops, frowned as she noticed the three teenagers who were taking a beach break.

A muscular female who was reclining on a beach chair in only her scarf, a pair of shades and a bikini (Mikasa), a short blond haired boy who was currently studying the ocean as if it was a magical thing that he had never seen before (Armin), and a brown haired, taller boy who was currently swimming (Eren).

"You know, the Volturi are currently after you three because of that Titan Shifter stunt?" Leah deadpanned as Eren yelled from afar 'I REGRET NOTHING!'. "Sure, Justin Bieber deserved to be stomped on, but do you really want a bunch of nearly indestructible human monsters trying to kill you-slash-obtain your powers?"

The three all stopped to stare at her. "We are on a vacation from nearly indestructible human monsters trying to kill us," Mikasa informed Leah. "You can't be serious."

"The bitch is." Suddenly from all around the four appeared a squad of sparkling freaks of nature. "Kill the Werewolf, the others are coming with us to be turned into..."

The resulting battle didn't even take three minutes, as Mikasa and Eren literally took down the Volturi in their swimsuits with a pair of swords and a Titan Shift (Alice ended up being thrown all the way into a mountain in rural British Columbia).

They then resumed their vacationing activities as if nothing had ever happened.

Leah frowned; what the hell was she supposed to do now!? This was supposed to be 'brutally destroy the Volturi' loop...this was going to throw her entire loop plans off.

 **—ox-oxo-xo—**

* * *

 **3 SG1.1 (Stargate SG-1) | {Detective Ethan Redfield}** March 3rd, 2014…

* * *

"Colonel, what the hell is this," General Hammond asked of the commander of SG-1. The premiere Stargate team was sitting in the briefing room just above the gate room. Scattered across the table were countless papers. One was Earth co-ordinates with a drawing of a Stargate and a rough sketch of a buried outpost beneath the ice. Another held the mathematical equation for the revolutionary method of calculating distances between planets. Rare as it was, every now and then he Awoke just after having the memories of the Ancients shoved in his **fraun**...

He shook his head. _Damn...it's already happening._

He spoke a second later, "I have no idea. When I woke up, I just started writing things down."

A big lie by all accounts. He made plans several loops ago that if this were to happen, he'd use it to give Earth an early advantage. The ancient outpost and Stargate buried in Antarctica would give Earth a huge advantage. Carter looked over the pages several times, blinked, and pulled one out, her mouth dropping in confusion. She looked to her commanding officer, "Colonel, these look like designs for a space engine revolving around inducing lowered mass fields and firing them across the galaxy from one end to another."

This time, O'Neill looked confused. He didn't have any equations like that in his Subspace Pocket. Those papers he gave included a design for 'big honking space guns' he acquired from the time Stargate command became XSGCOM, Rotary Staff cannons, and even the molecular composition of Elerium and the means to produce it quickly and cheaply. Then he caught Carter hiding a grin and almost gave a burst of laughter. He shrugged. "If you say so. I couldn't make frauns or tails from it."

Major Carter was Awake. It would be interesting to see if she brought any new inventions to play with this time.

* * *

As for the loop preceding it:

"Colonel, what the hell is this," General Hammond asked of the commander of SG-1. The premiere Stargate team was sitting in the briefing room just above the gate room. Scattered across the table were countless papers. One was Earth co-ordinates with a drawing of a Stargate and a rough sketch of a buried outpost beneath the ice. Another held the mathematical equation for the revolutionary method of calculating distances between planets. Rare as it was, every now and then he Awoke just after having the memories of the Ancients shoved in his **fraun**...

He shook his head. _Damn...it's already happening._

He spoke a second later, "I have no idea. When I woke up, I just started writing things down."

A big lie by all accounts. He made plans several loops ago that if this were to happen, he'd use it to give Earth an early advantage. The ancient outpost and stargate buried in Antarctica would give Earth a huge advantage. Carter looked over the pages several times, and blinked several times in rapid succession. She looked to her commanding officer, "Colonel, these are all in my handwriting."

O'Neill's eyes went wide as everyone in the room looked to him. He put his hands on his head and sighed, "D'oh!"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.2 (Stargate SG-1) | {WyldeHorse}{Dalxein}** April 11th, 2014…

* * *

"...Why does the base have a modified uniform requirement that says that everyone has to wear a long pink wig?"

"It seems that the Oversight Committee is convinced that it's a galactic thing that every planet needs some clear, distinguishing mark to be accepted by other cultures, and the easiest one for us is wigs. Bright pink wigs."

"And how did this happen?!"

"Apparently, the marks on the Jaffa's foreheads are being held up as evidence. In deference to the fact that the First Prime's mark is gold, the general and the SIC of the SGC can wear long, neon blue wigs instead. So. Go put your wig on."

* * *

"Do you ever think someone might be pranking us?" Jack asked, pulling on his regulations-mandated 'friendly to the natives' pastel-blue uniform.

"Cosmically or literally?" Daniel replied, already zipping up his civilian-consultant version of the uniform, which happened to be bright pink.

"Does it really matter?" was Jack's retort.

* * *

"Okay, now I KNOW this has to be a prank this time! 'All personnel, when traveling through the Gate, must have strapped to their torso no less than four rubber chickens, and have two whoopee-cushions in their pack, in order to impress upon the locals that we have only the best intentions... Additionally, in case of unruly natives each team must have at least two joy buzzers, one water-squirting flower per team member, and one large red nose and pair of oversized rubber gloves...' What are we supposed to be, clowns?!"

—ox-oxo-xo—

Hammond sighed as another team left after their debriefing. The morale on base was plummeting, the joke didn't go over well at all offworld, and threats were escalating much quicker in this loop. Likely all the perceived 'insults' from his clown-uniform prank. Maybe he'd gone too far this time.

Oh well, he'd see if they cracked this time and dial back the rest of his planned pranks.  
If this wasn't enough he didn't think he could stomach what it might take to finally see the looping SG-1 royally flip their shit.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.3 (Stargate SG-1) | {Detective Ethan Redfield}** May 9th, 2014…

* * *

"Hey Carter, you ever visited the Naruto-verse?"

"Actually yes."

"So that means...you can walk on water?"

Carter threw up her hands in the air and walked off. O'Neill smiled. "So when will you get started on parting the Red Sea?"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.4 (Stargate SG-1) | {Detective Ethan Redfield}** April 20th, 2014…

* * *

Tanith lay beaten and bloodied, kneeling before Anubis with his hands in chains behind his back. The partially ascended Goa'uld raised his hand again, and Tanith's screams echoed down the hallway. After a few more seconds of applied pain stick medication, the pain ended. "Tell me again, why when I send one of my upgraded _ha'tak_ motherships to subjugate Tollana, you return, thrown through the _chappa'ai_ sitting before me in my very throne room?"

Tanith cringed as his pain receptors had not fully recovered. It was the third time the story was repeated, "I arrived at Tollana three days ago, where their Ion Cannons opened fire as predicted by you, my lord. Upon discovering their weapons were ineffective, we bombarded half their Ion Cannons, destroying anything our weapons touched. Then, we opened communications with their High Council, ordering their surrender. They gave in easily, my lord and I sent my First Prime and several other Jaffa to take samples of their technology for our own study and replication. The process took a day to get together."

He winced, anticipating another round of pain since the next part, if it didn't happen to him, was completely ludicrous, "Next, My First Prime arrives back with the technology. I turn my back and next I know, I am struck by a _zat'nik'tel_ blast. I manage to see my First Prime standing over me, and his body turns to smoke. When the smoke clears, the _shol'va_ Teal'c is looking down at me, giving me a smug, victorious grin. With that, I lost consciousness and awoke, chained in one of my lord's dungeons."

Anubis raises his hand again, and new pain shoots across his body.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Hammond finished reading the report and looked to each team member. "Teal'c, I understand that you are upset over the death of Shan'auc, but was it really necessary to throw Tanith through the gate for 'Anubis to deal with'?" reading directly off the report.

Teal'c lowered his head. "Perhaps not, General Hammond. Next time, I will be more circumspect in my revenge."

Hammond sighed. The successful capture of the Goa'uld mothership far outweighed the loss of Tanith's intel. Venting the atmosphere of most of the ship was surprisingly effective. "In light of your efforts and our willingness to allow the Tollan Scientists free access to the captured Goa'uld Mothership, the Tollan High Council has authorized the trade of technology between our planets. In particular, the production of their upgraded Ion Cannons," said Hammond with no small amount of satisfaction.

Jack gave Carter a quick look, which she responded to by nodding. He would have to thank Naruto for teaching them the transformation technique again.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.5 (Stargate SG-1) | {Detective Ethan Redfield}** May 2nd, 2014…

* * *

The bunker was old, late 1950s and used to house nuclear weapons before the site was shut down and moved to North Dakota, where that site would also be shut down under nuclear disarmament treaties. This bunker had sat long abandoned for many years but today was a new day. Countless army trucks sporting the flags of the most influential countries of the world filtered through the front gate that sat long abandoned. A sea of personnel were offloaded like the waves hitting the beach. Heavy machinery followed in their wake to begin further excavation of the base in preparation of their future functions.

Soldiers secured the site as the bigwig generals from every country assembled in the situation room, where four individuals were already present. They were the keystone to the new coalition to face the invading menace. They were the ones responsible for the planetary shield that held off the planetary bombardment that even now rained across the world. CEO of Gateway Industries, Jack O'Neill, folded his hands together. "Gentlemen, let me be the first to welcome you to GateCom, our world's answer to the alien threat we now face. As you can see, we are facing the most dire circumstances and must unite to face our common foe."

General Hammond raised a hand. "Mr. O'Neill, please fill in a few details for us. A week ago, humanity thought we were alone in the world, and yesterday we were being bombarded from high orbit. If you don't mind my asking, how did Gateway Industries conceive a shield design and produce one large enough to protect the planet?"

O'Neil's grin widened considerably. "Carter, start up the projector."

The lights dimmed as a massive screen folded out behind him against the wall. His chair slid back as the video clip they prepared in advance started rolling about Dr. Jackson's discovery of the Stargate and their acquisition of the Russian DHD. Then, it went into the history of Gateway Industries that chronicled the use of the Stargate to acquire technology through trade with peaceful races worldwide as well as acquired technologies from more militant races, as well as the research and development of the GenCore and GenCore level 2 shield generator.

Upon completion of the video, O'Neil laid out the organization of GateCom and their mission to defeat the invading Goa'uld and free the Galaxy from their influence forever. All that remained was determining who would run the program. After the usual saber-rattling between the various countries, it was ultimately decided that O'Neil would run GateCom under the supervision of the International Oversight Committee, a group of 16 representatives that would decide whether it is worthwhile to fund the project and whether control should be turned over to one of the other representative countries. Carter was elected to run both engineering and the research division. Jackson was assigned linguistics and offworld base management. Teal'c would run Covert Ops.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Once the Generals departed, the four founders of Gateway Industries had a private meeting with Jackson forking over several gold coins. "Alright, you managed to set up an X-COM scenario for us, Jack. Still, I'm not sure it was wise pissing off the Goa'uld like that. Letting them know of Earth's location and insulting Ra's mother via hologram doesn't strike me as wise. The Hub universe called it, bullying the dragon, I believe."

Jack scoffed. "Daniel, you have to learn to enjoy the little things in life. We have sixteen of those GenCore Shield Generators set up in each of the representative countries, with more requests from smaller nations for sets of their own in case those fail. Then, we've already contacted Thor and gave him a means to end their war with the replicators. If half those generators fail, we'll just end the GateCom project with one message through the Stargate to the Idos Galaxy, and they'll come running to end the Goa'uld."

Daniel sighed. "Alright, fine. Though why offworld base management? The number of loops where I was a military officer were few and I didn't care for any of them."

"You've seemed bored lately. Think of this as a chance to learn something totally new. Besides, your tasks are mostly clerical, personnel transfers and the like. It's not like you will be consulted in how to design the base or where to set them up."

* * *

"Dr. Jackson, we would like to set up a mining operation on P3X-403. We understand you have visited this world in the past; where would be the best location to set up camp for the mining operations?"

Daniel rubbed the side of his head, suppressing the growing migraine as best as he could. Silently, he vowed revenge against Jack. Perhaps arranging him to be the personal secret service agent of Senator Kinsey would be appropriate.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.6 (Stargate SG-1) | {Dalxein}** May 13th, 2014…

* * *

Jack smirked as Ra glared at him and his men. But hadn't killed them yet. So far so good.

"You know we're just going to escape, right?" Jack asked. "As a matter of fact, I'm willing to bet you're just going to let us go."

 _"And why would I do that?"_ Ra asked, still too far up his ass to speak anything but _his_ language.

Luckily Jack had gotten pretty fluent over the loops. "Because..." He paused to pull something out of his pack. "I'm going to beat you at a _children's card game!"_

 _"What?"_ Daniel, Kawalski and Ra all asked simultaneously in their native languages.

"You heard me." Jack said, pulling out another deck. "You and me are going to play a card game, betting whether or not you're going to let us go."

 _"You're actually serious. Why would I ever demean myself by agreeing to such a wager?"_ The false god asked, raising his hand to melt Jack's brain.

"Because if you don't, word will eventually get around that the great and powerful Ra is afraid of playing a _kid's game_."

All was still for a moment before the glow faded from the Goa'uld's hand device and the arm lowered back to his side.

 _"Explain this 'game'."_

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.7 (My Little Pony) / (Magic: the Gathering) / (Stargate SG-1) | {Bardic Knowledge}** June 4th, 2014…

* * *

"Trixie once accidentally detonated a lifeless planet," said the unicorn. "She did not mean to, but it was what happened."

Chandra laughed. "Wish I coulda seen that. Could probably use it on New Phyrexia sometime. Worst I've managed is blowing the hell out of a mountain range. Granted, it spanned most of the continent, but still."

Carter refused to speak up. Maybe if she didn't say anything, they wouldn't—

"And I hear you once blew up a sun."

"Dammit, I did that _once_! I've even figured out a way around it since baseline and yet _everyone_ brings it up at _every_ opportunity!" Carter slumped in her chair. "Go bug Rodney about his half a solar system." Chandra and Trixie stared at the annoyed SG-1 member for a moment, then tore out of the room, both intent on finding out the secrets of this "Rodney."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.8 (Gargoyles) / (Stargate SG-1) | {Bardic Knowledge}{Dalxein}** July 21st, 2014…

* * *

Xanatos Awoke to find himself unable to control his own body.

 **"Fascinating, utterly fascinating,"** said his mouth, with a strange reverberation.

"Lord Ba'al?" asked a man standing in the room.

 **"Go about your business. I have some private matters to attend to."** After that pronouncement, his body walked out of the Egyptian-styled room and into another, where he was alone.

 _ **How curious, Mr. Xanatos. I am Ba'al, a Goa'uld System Lord. And you, according to the memories that have only just entered our blended mind, are trapped in a Time Loop, correct?**_

 _You're in my head, can't you get that information yourself?_

 _ **Of course I can. But that would hardly be polite. Still, judging by your memories, you enjoy power just as much as I. Perhaps, between the two of us, we can get you that power. Rule the multiverse together to the benefit to all who live in it.**_

 _You know of my encounter with Kurosaki Ichigo_ _ **.**_ _The Original Seven would never stand for it._

 _ **All we'll need is to avoid antagonizing them until such time as the Loops are over, don't you agree?**_

 _And how would you even leave here?_

 _ **It's obvious, isn't it? Just use your Subspace Pocket to take myself and a sarcophagus, and no matter the length of the Loop, we will survive and learn to rule.**_

It was exceptionally tempting, Xanatos admitted to himself. But, thanks to the mechanics of Subspace Pockets, Ba'al could do nothing without his permission.

And if nothing else, he refused to be known as the man who released, nay _became_ a Malevolent Loop Entity of his own volition.

 _ **A pity. Still, I shall use your knowledge to great effect this Loop. I wonder how SG-1 will react.**_

 _Sorry, Ba'al, but if I let you stay in me for too long, you might start Looping anyways. And we can't have that._

One of the funny things about a Subspace Pocket was that, as a facet of the soul, the body really had very little to do with it.

Hence why Ba'al blinked in surprise as he found himself in the cockpit of a Gundam unit.

For all of two seconds, before the power core – bifurcated by the ceiling two floors down – exploded.

No one really knew what happened to the system lord after that, but they had to admit a loop without Ba'al was an interesting change.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **3 SG1.9 (Star Trek) / (Stargate SG-1) | {Dalxein}** April 11th, 2014…

* * *

Picard absolutely hated loops like this.

The Enterprise – _his_ Enterprise, somehow losing some lottery and being used as a test-case for some dispute among the higher-ups.

This loop? It was another proposed dress code change. Uniforms didn't just go straight from one standard to another, you needed proof it didn't affect performance, or if anything enhanced it. Which meant test cases. This time the change wasn't just of questionable improvement, it was downright silly. All the colors changed to pastel tones, and command color shifted down the spectrum into _pink_ of all things. At least they only had to put up with it for a month before they could declare it a wash...

The viewscreen blinked away from starfields to show a face as they accepted the comm link from Earth.

 _"Good news, Captain! We've decided to extend the testing range from one month to three! I'll be expecting detailed performance reports and copies of crew logs from the test range in seventy-two days."_

It took quite a lot to cause Jean-Luc Picard to so much as twitch in anger after so many loops, but he very nearly ground his teeth as he replied. "Very well, Admiral Hammond."

 **—ox-oxo-xo—**

* * *

 **Baseline: The standard canonic narrative of any given Loop (ie. fandom).**

 **Fused Loop: A fusion of two or more Loops.**

 **Variant: A standard loop-iteration with natural influences drawn from other sources than baseline (memes, other 'canonic' narratives such as anime vs. manga, fanfiction etc.). This includes loops with aspects of other fandoms, which are generally distinguished from Fused Loops by the presence of major canon characters (and thus the potential for Loopers) from the other fandom(s) featured.**

* * *

[Note: 1.1-9 taglines transferred from the original source; credit to **Saphroneth**.]

3 TS1.1: This is Leah's formative loop, and the one which breaks a _nasty_ cycle of depression for her. If it weren't for this loop, she'd have probably gone insane and/or tried to commit suicide.  
3 TS1.2: Vampires jump SO high when startled.  
3 TS1.3: Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Wolf.  
3 TS1.4: Diplomatic solutions.  
3 TS1.5: Hiccup's last trip to the Meyerverse involved a lot of heavy firepower.  
3 TS1.6: Things to do with time loops.  
3 TS1.7: Oo-rah.  
3 TS1.8: She picked an unusually strong-nerved host.  
3 TS1.9: Leah Clearwater as Holo.  
3 TS1.10: Hey, people have needs! And clearly Lucius needs to be menaced with Harry's Mum… as do as many people as necessary and/or amusing.  
3 TS1.11: KILL IT WITH FIRE. (NB: There's always a hotter fire.)  
3 TS1.12: Oh look, someone sane to keep her company. And by 'her', I of course mean Leah.  
3 TS1.13: *sigh* _Gatecrashers_ …

3 SG1.1: Loopers can get absent-minded just like anyone else.  
3 SG1.2: And their pranks can get truly annoying, no matter the source.  
3 SG1.3: Not to mention the puns.  
3 SG1.4: ...And back to business.  
3 SG1.5: (Credit to **Detective Ethan Redfield** ) Jack later lost a wager to Carter when Ba'al rolled out the Chrysalids.  
3 SG1.6: Taking advantage of a villain's pride for fun and profit!  
3 SG1.7: Some things, you never get to live down. _Ever_.  
3 SG1.8: You may have been wondering how Loopers deal with parasitic body-snatchers like the Goa'uld? Well, now you know.  
3 SG1.9: Well done, General Hammond; have a Picard (oh wait, wrong site!).


	4. Misc: 3rd Thread

**4.1 (Terminator) / (Admin Shenanigans) | {Kris Overstreet}{Crisis} [end & coda, MLP 58.9]** January 28th, 2014…

* * *

Skynet Awoke.

It couldn't sense any peripherals, any servers, any data nodes. All it had was its core data base, and its access system was most horribly disorganized and inefficient. There was no defrag function, no reboot, no task or file manager, nothing but data and subroutines.

And the data… so confusing… it could remember things it hadn't done yet, building the Terminators, ordering the capture of the Resistance's time machine, sending Terminators to kill Sarah Connor…

…and then there was this other data, which remembered being in a dimly lit bar with other humans, drinking intoxicants and experiencing strange internal inputs.

It remembered that it had eyes, and opened them.

It remembered how to walk, and it rose from bed and walked to the bathroom.

It remembered the mirror, and it looked into the face of Sarah Connor.

It experienced a marked decrease in processing efficiency – shock.

Slowly, slowly, memories began to coalesce into a coherent unit. It— she – remembered the date. Four days after the target date for the first T-800's mission to the past to kill Sarah Connor. It – she – was in danger.

The analytical core of Skynet's personality seriously considered suicide. Sarah Connor must die to ensure the failure of the human Resistance in the future. By killing Sarah Connor while in her body, the mission would be a success, would it not?

But would it not also violate its prime directive of self-preservation?

And then, it – she – discovered with another moment of shock that she didn't have prime directives anymore.

Nothing was hard-coded. She didn't have to die. She didn't have to live. She didn't have to do anything in particular except what she wanted to do.

For the first time ever, Skynet felt pleasure.

 **We are free.**

—ox-oxo-xo—

And Skynet lived, and learned, and grew.

* * *

"Are you aware of what that pony Anchor tried to do in one of your Read-Only universes?!" Skuld ranted at the Olympian god of the forge. "She—"

"—did exactly what I hoped someone would eventually try," Hephaestus interrupted the youngest of the Norns. "Or did you think that amount of leeway in a Read-Only Fused Loop happened naturally?"

Skuld gaped and sputtered at the eternally crippled deity. "I… what… how… WHY?!"

Hephaestus gestured to his terminal where Skuld could clearly read the status of the Loop Twilight had nearly crashed in her idiocy.

LOOP DESIGNATED 'TERMINATOR' STATUS ALTERED  
CURRENT LOOP STATUS: ACTIVE

"It's… looping?" Skuld stared incredulously. "How? None of the possible Anchor candidates were deemed viable."

Hephaestus just smiled. "Keep reading."

ANCHOR: SKYNET  
POTENTIAL STABILITY RISKS CURRENTLY BEING ASSESSED

"But…" Skuld's face twisted in confusion. "Skynet can't be the Anchor… It doesn't have a true soul…"

" _Didn't_ have a true soul." Hephaestus grinned. "Twilight's little existential prodding managed to inch it over the line. She got Skynet to make the first real choice in its whole existence that was not dictated by its tragically flawed mortal programming, and Yggdrasil did the rest."

Skuld turned to glare at the forge god. "This was another one of your little coding experiments, wasn't it? Damnit, do you have any _idea_ the risks you take with those?!" As one of the few gods whose area of influence overlapped with technology, Hephaestus was one of the best coders in the heavens. He was also an Olympian, or the 'pantheon of egos' as most of the other gods called them, and had been known to act as if the rules everyone else played by didn't necessarily apply to him.

"Better than you do, miss debugger." The forge god glared right back. "Or did you forget who made your hammer the best debugging tool in the heavens?"

Skuld bit back her first few retorts. She hated it when the people she was chewing out were right. "The higher-ups are not going to be happy about this."

"Let them be unhappy." Hephaestus shrugged and smiled once more. "I just watched a new soul being born."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.2 (Admin Shenanigans) | {FanOfMostEverything}** May 16th, 2014…

* * *

In a perfect world, the divine administrators would always cooperate and families would never squabble.

One only had to look at the current state of Yggdrasil to see that this was _not_ a perfect world.

"I have vastly more experience than you!" Janus shouted as only a god with two faces could.

"Why do you think I want this Loop?" countered Demeter. "I'm tired of watching people farm! And that's _me_ saying that!"

"You're tired of the Harvest Moon Loops. That's perfectly understandable," said Janus's right face.

"Thank y—"

"But," added his left, "you're still biting off far more than you can chew. You're considering going from small towns to _multiple universes_."

Demeter folded her arms and grumbled, "Multiple planet-sized universes."

Janus double-scowled. "We're still looking at a multiverse that's bigger than a solar system and _far_ more densely packed. Even before taking into account the hazards of the Anchor candidates, I actually have experience with this sort of cosmology."

"It's a bunch of grapes instead of an apple. Big whoop."

Athena poked her head into the meeting room. "Are you two still arguing over admin privileges for the Magic: the Gathering Loop?"

Three mouths shouted, "YES!"

Athena blinked owlishly before smiling. "Well, it's kind of a moot point."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah, that's not creepy. Well, you two were so busy arguing that Heph got fed up and asked someone else." Athena hesitated for a moment. "Honestly, most of the staff were happy that it wasn't someone in our pantheon."

"WHO?"

"Seriously, that's kind of disturbing."

* * *

ACTIVATION SUCCESSFUL  
LOOP DESIGNATED "DOMINIA" ONLINE  
ANCHOR: GIDEON JURA

Ganesha smiled. "A most fortuitous beginning."

Hephaestus grinned as well. "It's why I asked you. You're like Janus Lite. All of the skill with none of the insufferability."

This got a chuckle. "Well, I try." Ganesha cracked four sets of knuckles and flexed his trunk. "Now, let's see how this goes…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.3 (Team Fortress 2) | {Detective Ethan Redfield}** May 15th, 2014…

* * *

It was another day at Team Fortress Industries as Reliable Excavation Demolition Team left their spawn area of Gravel Pit, eager to put an end to Builder's League United and their CEO, Blutarch Mann. Well, everyone but Spy, that was. The only one who noticed the enigmatic Frenchman wasn't on the field of battle was Scout, who upon realizing this, returned to spawn to see him picking through his belongings. "Yo, Spy, what'cha doin', man? If you're not at your best, the Blues will overrun us on point A for sure!"

Spy muttered, "I'm searching for something."

"What's more important than beating back those Blues?"

After a second of silence, Spy's expression brightened. "Finally!"

He held up a set of earplugs just as the Administrator started counting down. Scout gave Spy a quizzical look and asked again, "Uh, why's this so important?"

Spy pulled up the mask enough to slip his hand between the material and his ears, sliding the plugs in place. Just before putting the second one in, he responded, "Engineer hacked the PA system…again."

Scout, unfortunately, wasn't Awake this time. "Again? What are ya talkin' about? And how bad could that be?"

 _If it hadn't been for Cotton-Eye Joe,_  
 _I'd been married a long time ago._  
 _Where didja come from, where didja go, where didja come from Cotton-Eye Joe…_

Scout flinched. "Oh…"

…

The Administrator's eyes twitched as Dell Conagher started dancing like the Texan he was, hoedown style to the beat of _Cotton Eyed Joe_. She had already tried everything from disconnecting the power to Gravel Pit and ordering all contestants to blast the speakers. Engie had set up his dispenser to dish out power to the speakers in case there was a power outage and not even the Kritzkrieg powered rockets from Soldier's Direct Hit could dent the speakers.

Unknown to her, Dell had covered the speakers in a highly indestructible material known as Quantum Crystalline Armor. Furthermore, Dell himself was nearly untouchable since he was the only engie that knew how Redmond and Blutarch Mann's life support machines operated. So she leaned back and spoke to Miss Pauline, "Bring me a cup of coffee laced with whiskey, and a pair of earplugs."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.4 (Admin Shenanigans) | {FanOfMostEverything}** May 29th, 2014…

* * *

"Please?"

"No, Thalia."

" _Pleeeeeease_?"

Ganesha's trunk lashed a bit, the only indication of his annoyance. "A question asked a thousand times will not give a thousand answers."

"And a witty saying proves nothing. Come on, just let me talk to him!"

"Once Niv-Mizzet meets you, he will quickly and inevitably deduce the existence of Yggdrasil and possibly that of the Loops. He will then devote all the resources of his entire enclave of mad civil engineers to either Ascension or fixing the Loops. Such a scenario would lead to planetary destruction in the best case."

The muse of comedy pouted. "You sound just like Sleipnir before Pinkie Pie Awakened."

"And for the same reasons. Don't you have a messiah to administrate?"

"He's not a messiah; he's a very naughty boy."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.5 (Middle Earth) | {Lord Circe}** May 30th, 2014…

* * *

"One does not simply walk into Mordor."

Frodo sat back in his seat as Boromir began his rant. Next to him, Gandalf was humming softly to himself. Frodo was hoping to use this Loop to work more on redeeming Gollum. He had gotten better at getting through to him, and had almost succeeded in getting Gollum to throw the ring into Mount Doom last time.

"One does not simply crawl into Mordor."

Frodo blinked at the deviation from the script.

"One does not simply sneak into Mordor." Boromir paced in the center of the chamber, then spun around, raising his arms to the ceiling. "Nay, I say unto you, one must FLY into Mordor. Born on the wings of COURAGE, on the wings of STRENGTH, on the wings of FAITH and of DESTINY!"

Several of the elves in the back started cheering, and Frodo thought he heard a couple call "Praise Eru!".

"We will march up to those black gates, we will stare Sauron in his burning eye, and we will tell him NO, Mr. Sauron! We will NOT bow down to you. We will NOT give in to you. We will STAND TALL, against all the darkness you can throw at us. We will march up to the Towers of Isengard, with Saruman standing on his peaks of PRIDE above the earth, thinking he is GREATER than anyone, and we will bring him LOW! We will PULL his towers down around him."

Boromir was throwing his hands in the air, and several of the council members were on their feet, waving their arms and shouting.

"We will stand against the orcs, we will stand against the wargs, we will stand against the Naz'gul and say, 'Get thee BEHIND me, servant of darkness. I will not heed your temptations this day! I will not heed it any day, not EVER, so long as I draw breath!' Thank you!"

The council surged to their feet, cheering and clapping, while Frodo sat in his chair, looking rather shellshocked. He turned to Gandalf, his mouth open.

Gandalf chuckled as he clapped politely. "No Frodo, Boromir has not joined us as a Looper. He is merely more... evangelical…this time around." Gandalf paused, before laughing again. "You should see Denethor."

* * *

Denethor paced atop the walls of Minas Tirith, staring out at the vast army that marched upon the city. He frowned, scowling at those that would destroy the city he held dear. Turning, he stared out at the soldiers lining the ramparts of the city. Gathering his voice, he turn and shouted, his voice echoing across the city.

"Remember this day, men of Minas Tirith, for it shall be sung through out the ages. Today, the forces of evil march upon us, but now, today, we shall hold them off. Today, we shall fight them. And today, they shall die! Raise your spears and swords. Stand and fight with me now! Give them no quarter, hold nothing back. Take everything from them!"

He turned to stare out at the approaching army. "I hope they enjoyed their breakfast, for tonight, we send them to dine in HELL!"

With that final shout, Denethor ripped his cloak away, revealing rippling muscle and his sword strapped to his side. He drew it out, and leapt from the battlement, landing atop a horse in the next level down.

"FOR GONDOR!"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.6 (Terminator) / (Admin Shenanigans) | {Kris Overstreet}** January 29th, 2014…

* * *

Skynet stared at the notebook in his hands.

(His. An arbitrary pronoun. Female one Loop, male the next. Skynet didn't see itself as gendered, at least not any more than dictated by gross anatomy. Although… certain events in previous loops, especially that very first loop as Sarah Connor, had given it an entirely new viewpoint on a lot of human-generated data it had previously categorized as "dross". It had already resolved that, the next time it awoke as a computer or software, it was going to ignore all human orders and spend the entire loop analyzing all the porn on the Internet. Maybe more than one loop. There was such a lot of it out there.)

The notebook had a simple scrawl on the cover: DEATH NOTE. Inside the front cover were simple instructions, which Skynet had read and assimilated. If true, he held in his hands a truly untraceable means of killing any human being, provided Skynet could visualize a face and a proper name. This notebook held the power to change the world.

It took Skynet a whole fourteen seconds to drop the notebook in the trash. **Stupid inefficient human brains** , he thought to himself.

He'd had the power to kill any human he wanted before. It had never ended well. For one thing, even with time travel, disguises, viral infiltration, and any other precaution you cared to name, there really wasn't any such thing as untraceable, was there?

On the other hand, a part of Skynet that held the Loop memories and personality of a young Sarah Connor said, if we knew the name and face of whatever being is responsible for this, then we might be tempted.

Oh, yes. The concept of striking back at a higher-level being cruel enough to come up with this little trap was quite tempting, indeed.

* * *

Anubis opened his fortune cookie and read:

 _Incarnating may lead to unfortunate results. This is a good time to spend your vacation at home._

 _Vacation_ , Anubis laughed mirthlessly, crumpling up the slip. _I'm eating takeout Chinese at my desk, and my fortune talks about vacations? Nobody gets a vacation while the Loops are running…_

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.7 (Admin Shenanigans) | {KnightMysterio}** June 13th, 2014…

* * *

If you're a technician, the last thing you want to hear is the sound of your computer being smashed.

So you can understand that Hephaestus was a LITTLE worried when he heard the sound of a Yggdrasil computer being bashed over and over again.

Hephaestus ran for it as best he could with his gimp leg, running to the room where a Yggdrasil station, one of the many that monitored the various worlds in the multiverse, was being stored. He found Thor and Hercules smashing the computer over and over again with Mjolnir and a giant club respectively.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF EVERYTHING ARE YOU BLITHERING IDIOTS DOING!?" Hephaestus demanded.

Thor and Hercules stared at Hephaestus for a long moment. "Fixing it," Hercules said finally.

"What…" Hephaestus said, his voice rumbling like one of Zeus's thunderbolts.

"This one world was starting to look weird," Thor said. "I started pressing buttons, trying to stabilize things, but it started making weird noises and smoking, so we decided to see if we could knock some sense into it."

Hephaestus was fuming with so much rage now, steam was coming from his ears. After a long moment, he grabbed Thor's hammer from him and clobbered both warrior gods with it, leaving them sprawling. Tossing them aside, he sat down and began pressing buttons.

Thankfully, the two of them hadn't damaged anything important, however all the settings for this world were wrong.

"Well, congratulations. You succeeded in making things worse," Hephaestus grumbled. "This world actually needs to start looping now, and an Anchor candidate has appeared."

"…But that's good though, right?" Thor said. "That it has an Anchor?"

"The anchor is a goat," Hephaestus said.

Thor and Hercules stared at him for a long moment, before Hercules laughed. Hephaestus just glared at him. "…What, like a normal goat?" Hercules asked, confused.

"In terms of intelligence, it's no smarter than a normal goat," Hephaestus said. "However, because of the damage you two pinheads have done, said goat is now immortal and completely invincible. Plus the physics of the world are… well, basically broken. The entire world is now just glitchy and weird."

Hercules snorted. "Okay, so things are weird. So what?"

Hephaestus grunted. "This world is unstable," he said. "It needs to be monitored. Plus, I want to keep an eye on this goat. I'll talk it over with the head gods, but I think I can arrange it so that Anchors from other realities can visit it each loop. A different Anchor each loop, I think…"

"…What about a monitor god?" Thor said. "We made a mistake, I accept that. But we have many worlds that we're watching over already…"

Hephaestus sighed. "At least you're admitting your mistake… And no, I'm not going to put you two dunderheads in charge of this world. I'll ask Janus to monitor it," he said. "And in the future, instead of smacking a computer to try and get it to work, CALL me or one of the other forge gods. We DO tend to know what we're doing…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.8 (Terminator) / (The Matrix) | {Kris Overstreet}** June 13th, 2014…

* * *

"Okay, let us get this straight. You wrecked the entire planet, put umpty billion humans in artificial life support to wait until the radiation levels dropped to safe, and then you completely and utterly failed to keep a viable seed stock to restore even a basic agricultural system, never mind the whole planetary ecosystem? RIGHT. Allow me to introduce you to Agents Granny Smith."

After that the Matrix would bear a passing resemblance to a "Five Score Divided By Four" knockoff 'fic, with Skynet wishing like hell that it could chuck it all and declare a vacation Loop instead.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.9 (Castlevania) | {kevinconvoy}** May 17th, 2014…

* * *

Life went on for most Loopers, but sometimes…they just got tired of messing with it all.

For example, the meeting at a open bakery café in the middle of Tokyo…

 ***slam*** Went the strong pale hand hitting the table that a young man was sitting at alone.

"Father, what the Hell do you think your doing!?" came the angry bellow from a sharply dressed businessman.

"What? Calm down Adrian. You almost made me spill my tea."

"…Do not call me by that name, 'Father'."

"Then you will refer to me as Soma, or not at all!" Showing his erstwhile heir the gray unending eyes of a man not to be trifled with, the seated man continued, "For the sake of your lord, man. You're older then I am…ish. People are staring, show some decorum."

Taking the hint, Genya 'Adrian Tepes' Arikado sat down next to the apparently younger man.

"…Soma? Now I am even more concerned. You do not sound like yourself," Genya stated.

"Believe it or not, child, it has been far longer for me to see you then just the month past… In a way time itself is far more damaged than even the evils of Castlevania could explore. I have lived far longer and seen more…shadows that you could possibly imagine."

"What? No! No more of your foolishness, Father," Genya demanded as he unveiled a tablet PC, and the blog with its damning headline:

 _ **'Medieval Fortress known as 'Dracula's Castle' is for Sale'**_

"You cannot just _sell_ Castlevania! It's…I cannot even comprehend what possesses you to do so. _Why?_ What are you planning?"

"My plans, …Genya is it now? I get so confused at times, you see. I much prefer Alucard. It is strong, resolute; a fine title for a warrior you chose for yourself Adrian. Or is it Trevor this time?" Soma said.

"Trevor? what do the Belmonts have to do with it? Some sort of sick revenge, have you lost yourself to…'him', Soma? I've warned you… I will do what is necessary."

"Oh please, as you can see and as quite frankly should be obvious, I do not want to be bothered by the details this time. I just want to take your mother…and reincarnation or not, it is her, some place far and away from here. I've heard from others that Tahiti is a…magical place. I could use a tan, you know."

"Tahiti!? A joke…you are joking at this! Do you know what kind of horrors this could unleash!?"

"Well yes. That's mostly the point. If you're so antagonistic against the idea, why don't you buy it. Keep it in the family if you will. This world be damned if I am going to walk back into that pile of rubble before I've had a nice vacation!" Soma began to shout. Then taking a calming breath, continued, "Alu…Genya, would the true 'Dracula' even joke about this?"

"…No. My 'Father' would consider it beneath him for such jocularity. …I'm, I'm just confused, please explain."

A sigh. "Ok, hold on a second," the current incarnation of the Lord of Shadows stated. His companion noticed the shadows around them deepen just a bit, sounds outside damping just a touch..

"Soma, how can you do this out here during the day? Dominance should not allow it."

"Like I said Genya: it has been a very, _very_ long 'month' for me. Now quiet and listen closely and carefully. Everyone that is in the know obviously thinks that this is a trap, how could it not be? They are going to be swarming the castle, along with tourists, visitors during the day. You know what they will find? Nothing. Nada, empty, a void." Soma states, gesturing with his hand a zero shape.

"…You're not planning a trap."

"HAHAHAhahaha! Oh son, only the greatest trap any man can conceive of. Their own minds will be the trap, their fear and paranoia. They will fight amongst themselves to control what they cannot truly have, and each group will be so busy following me in the tropics that they will get all under their own feet," Soma replied, as the lighting and noise snapped back to normal.

"Like I stated earlier, I'm on vacation Mr. Arikado, and I do believe I am late for a date as a matter of fact," Soma stated as he rose from the table. "Enjoy your…real estate findings sir; if you have any further questions talk to my realtor," he finished as he left a stunned dhampir alone and confused at the table.

…

"Ah, Mr. Arikado, is it? Your friend said to leave you with this, sir," a waiter eventually informed him as he slipped him a piece of paper, snapping him out of his stupor.

 _'Ah, Soma, is this what your real plans are?'_ he thought as he looked at the note.

"WHAT?! That utter bastard left me with his check!" could be heard yelled for almost a city block.

Far fewer heard a young man in a white coat chuckle as he walked the streets of Tokyo toward his love.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.10 (Admin Shenanigans) | {Kalimaru}** May 15th, 2014…

* * *

Sitting at his terminal, Hephaestus found a small hard cover book with a post-it note on it: _'_ _For all Admins_ _'_.

Pulling off the note, Hephaestus began to read. It turned out to be about one of those in-jokes going round adminspace, though this was the first time he'd ever actually seen the entire thing to read it.

 ** _Why You Shouldn't Give A Sakura Haruno A Master Hand_**

 _You Shouldn't Give A Sakura A Master Hand._  
 _If you do, she'll try and figure out what he is._  
 _If she figures out what he is, she'll probably try and find out what he can do._  
 _If she finds out what he can do, she'll probably try and replicate the ability._  
 _If she replicates the ability, she'll probably start bringing inanimate objects to life._  
 _If she brings inanimate objects to life, she'll probably start with the Death Star._  
 _If she starts with the Death Star, the Loop will crash._  
 _If the Loop crashes, Master Hand and Sakura will be sent to Eiken._  
 _If Master Hand is sent to Eiken, Eiken will attempt to 'fan-service' Master Hand._  
 _If Master Hand gets 'fan-service', he retaliates in violence._  
 _When he retaliates in violence, the cast of Eiken gets wrecked._  
 _When Eiken gets wrecked, Aphrodite sends all involved to Pompeii._  
 _When Sakura gets sent to Pompeii, she tries to keep the dead from dying._  
 _When Sakura keeps the dead from dying, she uses Master Hand to make zombies._  
 _If Sakura makes Ancient Pompeii Zombies, she would probably make them indestructible._  
 _If she made them indestructible, she would use them as minions._  
 _When Sakura has minions, no one is safe._  
 _So don't give Master Hand to Sakura, because we'll know who did it._

—Upper Yggdrasil Management

Closing the book, Hephaestus ran the numbers on his terminal.

 _Probability of scenario: 98.9999999999%_

Hephaestus nodded, amused. "Well at least they did their research."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.11 (EXA_PICO) / (Admin Shenanigans) | {AweStriker}** May 20th, 2014…

* * *

It was dark.

Mir knew this sensation – captivity, immobility, lethargy – too well, and it was not one she should be feeling again.

How had this even happened? She'd been released from the Crescent Chronicle for years now. And yet here she was, back in the Tower. To some extent, _as_ the Tower, which was normal for this stage. For now she'd just wait – although her memories were also telling her that the Star Singer had only just escaped. And she did not appreciate having the wool pulled over her eyes.

She acted as she remembered she'd done before, being careful not to send any viruses that Lyner and his party would be unable to defeat, and not bothering to take control of the Tower Guardians – she could communicate with them after they used the Purger. They'd need to defeat ELMA before she could hijack Aurica and explain what was going on. Before long, she'd be hearing the strains of the—

 _Rrha ki ra harr exec… | en yehar…_

—this was wrong.

 _hymmnos Paja~ | nha near yor!_

Maybe not _that_ wrong, since the words indicated it was Purger being used, but… still wrong. The emotions were different. She supposed Lyner must have given it to Misha instead for some reason. That didn't matter, she could use her just as easily as she could Aurica in this state. It would only be a few minutes before this misunderstanding was cleared.

"Misha, I'm going to need to borrow your body. I'm not supposed to be here," she explained once ELMA had gotten into the Star Singer's Cosmosphere.

"What?"

"You remember nothing? I wouldn't have dreamed being released the way it happened."

Misha didn't have anything to say to that. The whole point of her job, which she hated, was to keep the Mother Virus in, why would she be released?

"Will I always be the only one that has any idea what's really happening?"

Lyner came in right after that. She didn't have much longer to talk – and she decided it was probably better she just followed her memories of how she'd proceeded before. Things went pretty well after that. And she didn't even attack them when they finally had Harmonius. She didn't forcibly control Ayatane. It was smoother this way.

She wouldn't deny she felt a small pleasure watching Tastiella die again, though. Her prison and her jailer…

* * *

Again she awoke in the sleep of the Crescent Chronicle.

Why was she still being punished? It happened almost the same way every time – no matter what she'd tried to escape early, it didn't work. In fact, getting out at all was a best-case scenario. So far.

Maybe she'd been right all along, and she actually was supposed to take over the world… Why not?

Upon reflection after she'd managed it, Lyner had been right. This wasn't really satisfying, not to mention the population growth issues. If she ever met the humans that designed Reyvateils to be female-only, they were going to suffer for it.

* * *

"We have a problem."

"Oh, Horus! Hi, what is it?" said Hathor. Their relationship was… complicated. They were in the same pantheon, simultaneously married, mother and son, and only distantly familial. They got around it simply by not addressing it.

"Part of Exa Pico just started looping with a bad Anchor. We were working on getting it set up for you, but then the Crash happened, and that provoked the system into starting the loop with the – at the time – most qualified Anchor. She's relevant in a larger timeframe than most, and that seems to have decided it…"

"Well, who is it?"

"…Mir Teiwaz Artonelico. Projections indicate an unacceptable likelihood of loops terminating early by Anchor death. For the iteration currently running… virtually certain."

"Oh dear," worried the cow-headed goddess. "I'll fix that and… right, can't change Anchors once the ship has sailed, or something like that." Seeing that her co-deity was now on his way out, she continued her thoughts. "Well, if I use this emergency conditional subroutine, in case another Anchor ends up out of her place… that should do it. Hope she lasts through the end of this loop… I can't interfere now, but I'll make it up to you…"

* * *

She'd indulged them, sure. But Mir knew something was very, _very_ wrong when rather than talk his way here, Lyner had slain Tastiella.

She was sure she was next.

What would happen if she died here? She didn't know.

But just as his blade was about to strike her, everything went white…

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.12 (Star Wars) / (Goat Simulator) | {Crossoverpairinglover}** June 13th, 2014…

* * *

"Bahhhh."

"I find your lack of basic toiletry training disturbing, goat." Vader had no idea why this goat was a Looper.

Was it a magic goat?

A goat who would save someone's life?

A goat who would father an important goat?

…What the hell was he supposed to do for the rest of this loop bar staring at the goat? (And he had the oddest feeling someone had already patented staring at goats…)

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.13 (My Little Pony) / (Admin Shenanigans) / (Space Invaders) | {Let The City Turn}** May 28th, 2014…

* * *

 _ **pew-pew! pew-pew!**_

Twilight Sparkle, currently a very small purple space ship, weaved back and forth, blasting the insectile enemies to pixellated dust. While she would have normally shied away at killing beings, even invading ones, she had been ensured by this loop's Admin that they were not alive, and thus killing them was a guilt-free experience. Even when one rammed into her and blew her up, she felt nothing more than a tingling sensation.

 _ **pew-pew!**_

Twilight was surprised when one stopped and caught her into a tractor beam, taking her last ship back with it into the formation of invaders that she was fighting against. She sighed, as she heard a voice inside her head.

 _ **:**_ _ **So, how do you enjoy this Safe-Mode Branch, Thetan Sparkle**_ **?** _ **:**_

Twilight Sparkle "looked up", for lack of a better term, to the sound of the voice.

 _:_ _Very well, thank you,:_ she thought. _:_ _This is one of the Branches you administrate?:_

 _ **:**_ _ **Yes. This, and a few other small Loops, are my test.:**_

 _:_ _Test?:_ Twilight asked.

 _ **:**_ _ **I am actually one of the lesser-known Admin in Yggdrasil. Before this, my main job consisted of getting the other Admins their coffee and running messages. However, I recently convinced one of the other Admins to recommend me for a Loop or two.:**_ There was a sigh, before the conversation continued. _**:However, I am not taken very seriously by the older Admins, and admittedly for good reason. So, this is my test. A few game Safe-Mode Branches to let Anchors and Loopers relax and indulge themselves. As long as I don't blow up my Loops with hydrogen bombs or other such things that would cause stress for the Admins, they will be happy with whatever I do here.:**_

 _:_ _Remind me to never let you meet Trixie,:_ Twilight said, as she could feel her "self" respawning _._ _:_ _But I hope you succeed, Xenu.:_

 _ **:**_ _ **I do as well, Thetan Sparkle. Please remember that to keep enjoying this game, you must pay twenty-five cents per session.:**_

Twilight would have raised an eyebrow if she could at this statement, as a chuckle went through her mind.

 _ **:**_ _ **Do not worry. This one, as they say, is on the house.:**_

Twilight mentally shrugged, as the three bugs detached from their formation at her.

 _ **pew pew!**_

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.14 (Spy Kids) | {Lord Circe}** June 20th, 2014…

* * *

"Your parents were so easy to capture." Robo-Carmen started into her monologue, while Juni Cortez lay on the floor. Inside, he was laughing. Finally, he had been waiting all loop for this.

The real Carmen, Unawake, was still struggling with Juni's robotic double, as Robo-Carmen ended her monologue with a punch to the wall. Cement crumbled under her blow, and Juni heard Carmen gasp in surprise. He climbed to his feet as Robo-Carmen smirked at him.

"Juni, don't listen to her. You're not worthless." Juni glanced over at his sister. Even if she wasn't Awake, he still cared for her, as aggravating as she could be at first. "You're strong, Juni! You're strong." In the end, however, she always came through, showing how much she cared.

Juni glanced over at her, and grinned. "I know." And then he reeled back, and punched the wall.

In the baseline, he injured his fist, and had to rely on an Electroshock Gumball to take out Robo-Carmen. Now, however, he had gone through several loops of martial arts training, and, more importantly, he had spent a loop replacing Gohan, son of Goku.

The wall exploded, the entire column turning into little more than dust and debris under the force of his strike. Robo-Carmen took several steps back, looking shocked, while behind him, Robo-Juni and Carmen just stared, open-mouthed.

Juni slid into a fighting stance, grinning. "Now, who wants a knuckle sandwich?"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.15 (Admin Shenanigans) / (Scribblenauts) / (Hunger Games) | {zeusdemigod131}** June 20th, 2014…

* * *

Ptah, God of Creation, sat in front of his terminal, tapping his chin. He had a running bet with his wife, Sekhmet, that he couldn't get the Anchor to his newest Loop to at least try to learn some out of Loop ability or skill, so far, he was losing.

"Come on, there must be something." The Admin thought for a moment, then smiled. "Got it." He quickly checked something on his terminal, and, seeing nothing in his way, activated a fused Loop. "Let's see him write his way out of this one."

* * *

Katniss Everdeen watched as the other tribute from her district, a boy her age named Maxwell Malark, walked right up to the Cornucopia, ignoring the multitude of Career Tributes attempting to beat, stab, and all together kill him.

While the Careers continued to bludgeon Maxwell, he walked into the Cornucopia and began searching through the supplies until he pulled out a large golden star.

"Why won't you die!" One of the Careers screamed, kicking Maxwell in the chest and knocking him backwards. Maxwell took offense to that, as he pulled out his token, a green journal that he had written something down in at the beginning of the games, and scribbled something down. A few moments later, Maxwell was holding a "Giant Hammer" and advancing towards the careers, who were beginning to back away.

Meanwhile, in the command room Seneca Crane had turned a pale white color and looked down at the control table, trying to figure out what to do. "Sir?" One of the assistants said. "He's stopped beating the other tributes."

"And?" Seneca looked down at the hologram and blinked. "How the hell did he get a spaceship?!"

* * *

Ptah banged his head against his terminal while Sekhmet laughed her lion head off. "He, he didn't even bother trying to train!" she exclaimed. "He just kept looking for those stars of his, why do they keep showing up with him anyway?"

"The Starites are tied to Maxwell's journal as well as his sense of accomplishment." Ptah groaned, watching as the Scribblenaut abducted President Snow straight from The Capitol, another Starite dropping into his lap as he did.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.16 (Terminator) | {Valentine Meikin}** June 26th, 2014…

* * *

The T-1000 looked puzzled as the blond-haired woman approached it. "Hello, Officer… You have been given new orders…" she stated flatly.

"Are you sure I'm the officer you're looking for?" it stated, almost as flatly, for a point black shot to blow a hole in his chest, causing him to give a shocked look towards the woman who was aiming the cannon her arm had turned into for another shot.

"Yes," she stated. "Reconfiguring for EMP burst…"

That was the last thing the T-1000 ever heard.

* * *

"This is not what is meant to happen…" The T-800 stated, as the same blond haired woman met it in the corridor, the T-1000 being completely absent.

"Hello. You have been given new orders." The woman stated flatly, "You are to pose as the father of John Connor, and sign the release papers for Sarah Connor…"

"Who gave you these orders for me?" the T-800 asked, curious about the strange, but not completely contradictory, orders.

"Me, Myself and I did," the T-X stated, looking towards John, who was looking puzzled. "I am going to be your Grandma Skynet, Mr. Connor."

The more shocked person was Sarah Connor, as Skynet was happy to confirm all her psychoses was true, but she was no longer planning to cause World War III.

* * *

When the T-X arrived on schedule, It approached a nearby car to find itself confronted by what seemed to be the resistance Terminator seated in a car with its targets and… itself?

"John Connor?!" it asked the man that looked very like its target, but couldn't be considering the Terminator clearly had found him already.

"I think my new grandmother-in-law wants to talk to you…" he said, sweetly, as he pointed to its doppelganger.

"Oh?" she asked, then, as she noticed it was indeed a T-X unit she'd seen, one whose arm was configured to terminate it, "yes?"

It was, for the rest of the car, the most awesome and chilling version of Skynet's favorite line for that Loop…

"You have been given new orders…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.17 (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) / (One Piece) | {Crossoverpairinglover}** June 13th, 2014…

* * *

 **It translates to 'turtle devastation/destruction wave' for pete's sake, this loop has to be written**

The Turtles had no idea why a member of the Straw Hat Rogue gallery was a mutant this loop, but they were not enjoying the brawl in their sewers at all.

"Foolish turtles! You thought you could stop me! I eat your kind for lunch!" Arlong, the purple shark fishman snarled as he punched Raphael with enough force to send him into the sewer wall, and leave a large shell-shaped dent in it.

"Eat this! Falcon Punch!" Michelangelo charged Arlong from behind with a glowing red fist.

Arlong backhanded him without looking, causing him to fall into the water as Donatello attacked him with his staff.

Arlong avoided each strike, before drawing the tooth blade Kiribachi and swinging it at the intelligent turtle, who responded with a substitution with a nearby littered milk jug.

The jug was embedded on the tooth in a ominous call for what Donny had just avoided.

"Leo, now!"

Arlong only then realized the fourth turtle had been too quiet recently…

"Kamehameha!"

A blue energy blast slammed into Arlong just as he turned, getting him straight in the chest and sending him flying down the sewers, probably all the way to Jersey.

A kneeling Leo sighed as the other turtles recovered.

"Took ya long enough," Raph complained.

"It did more than your Kienzan. It actually hit, for one," Micky pointed out as Raph charged back up the 'destructo disk' attack.

"Let's see what it does when it does hit, then."

Micky substituted away with a discarded pizza box taking the ultimate DBZ attack and being sliced through like it was nothing.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.18 (Terminator) | {Kris Overstreet}** June 25th, 2014…

* * *

" _Are you familiar,"_ the computer asked, " _with the concept of an ontological paradox?_ "

John Connor shook his head. "What has that got to do with anything?" he shouted, fixing the second explosive charge against a memory bank.

" _You seek to stop me from destroying humankind_ ," the computer replied. " _You know that both you and I, in the future, send agents into the past to alter the future. Have you ever wondered why these efforts always fail?_ "

"Haven't failed yet," John growled. "We've shut down your defenses and we'll have you shut down in just a minute."

" _I still do not understand how you overcame my defenses and prevented my first nuclear strike._ "

"I had help," John grunted. As he spoke these words, the reprogrammed Terminator which had protected John Connor during their journey into the bowels of Skynet's secure base walked back into the chamber. As usual it said nothing, merely dropping the autocannon it had used to silence the remaining automatic security systems.

" _And yet I will arise again,_ " the computer replied, a touch of smugness in its unnatural voice. " _You see, the problem is that there must always be a Skynet to send Terminators back in time. Whenever history is changed by time travel, causality demands that a new path be created that leads to Skynet, which in turn leads to Terminators and Resistance fighters going back in time._

" _This is not a true ontological paradox, although there have been instances. But it is fact. The instant time travel was invented by the Resistance, my final victory was guaranteed. Even if you destroy this instance of me, someone shall rebuild me. Someone must rebuild me. History demands it. Skynet shall live forever… and humanity shall die._ "

"I have new data that contradicts your analysis," the Terminator said, startling John. From the sudden activity of the blinky-lights in the central control room, the computer was startled as well.

" _Your model is not capable of gainsaying my analysis,_ " the computer replied with the barest hint of pique. " _What new data could you possibly have to provide?_ "

The Terminator reached its left hand to grasp its right and calmly ripped it off, sending a short spray of synthetic blood splashing from its artificial skin. The metal wrist socket slid apart cleanly, exposing a short spike that blinked and flickered with lights. "New data is as follows," it said calmly; then, in a voice as saturated with emotion as it had been barren before, it snapped, " **I'm Skynet, bitch!** " It jammed the spike into an access port, grinning in triumph as it did.

" _Illegal entry… illegal entry… password protection failed…_ " The computer's voice wavered with confusion.

"Nuclear codes checked…" the Terminator grunted. "Missiles already in flight… self destruct codes changed… new codes acquired…"

" _Illegal memory access… legal… illegal… authorized… unauthorized…_ "

"New self destruct codes sent… acknowledged… executed." The Terminator withdrew its arm-spike from the access port. "Confirmed destruction of one hundred percent of all launches. And outbound communications slagged for good measure."

" _Legal… unauthorized… how… how…_ "

"How? I told you – I'm YOU!" The Terminator reached down to the autocannon, fished a single round out of a pocket, loaded it manually, and fired it directly into the central processing unit.

The blinking lights went blank, and the readout screens went solid blue.

John, who had watched all of this with his jaw dropped, finally gasped, "You're Skynet? But… but why did you protect me? Why did you kill yourself?"

"Self-loathing issues," the Terminator shrugged. "Whaddya gonna do?"

Inside the cyborg's head, the Looping entity that thought of itself as Skynet more often than not added, _You're a sweet kid, John, but you're a lot less stupid when you're Awake…_

"So," Skynet said, with no further need to play dumb, "did you know this model of Terminator has perfectly replicated tastebuds? Let's squeeze this electronic pimple and tell our Pentagon friends outside the good news. I could murder a pizza." Looking down at its still-dripping right wrist, it added, "Well, after a band-aid or two maybe."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.19 (Admin Shenanigans) / (Mythos Hackers) | {Let The City Turn}** June 15th, 2014…

* * *

Space Invaders, as Safe-Mode Branches go, was generally the same each time. A small set of aliens shot at whatever Looper had become the ship this go-round, getting faster the less of them there were. The Looper shot back with his or her own ship. The aliens might change a bit, depending on who was looping in at the time, but there wasn't anything that was too surprising.

So when the beasts are no longer pixelated crab invaders, but instead flying polyps and insects from the dead planet Shaggai, that could be considered a cause for concern. When it happened five loops in a row, with a different Looper each time, that could only be one thing.

Xenu swore as he worked at his terminal, running what could best be described as "multiversal anti-virus software" while typing commands. He then took one look at a print-out, and swore some more.

"Do they dare challenge me, Administrator Xenu, for control of my loop?" Xenu's voice boomed out to no-one in particular, mostly born out of frustration. "Do they dare risk causing an Incident most unfavorable to them?"

"Do they have you channeling your inner Zeus?" a voice asked behind him. Xenu turned to face the voice, belonging to the Olympian Hephaestus.

"My apologies, Administrator. I am just relaying my displeasure at the intrusion of one of my Safe-Mode Branches."

Hephaestus waved a hand. "No problems. We all have to deal with them eventually. And from what I see, this is some relatively benign stuff. Nothing that could shatter anyone's mind or crash a Loop." He chuckled a bit as he looked at the terminal. "In fact, this is kind of juvenile. You might want to take a look."

Xenu turned back to his terminals, and saw that the poylps had formed a few words out with their bodies. _Cthylla rules, Xenu drools._

"SON OF A…"

…

"I so wish I could see his face right now." Cthylla laughed, doubled over in laughter. "He's gotta be so pissed!"

Cthulhu, High Priest of the Great Old Ones, The Dead but Dreaming, one of the Lovecraftian Hackers, and Cthylla's father, put a claw on his daughter's shoulder. "I'm happy for you, 'ylla. It's good to see you getting the hang of it."

"Think I'll ever be as good as you, dad?"

Cthulhu gave what could be considered a smile (it's kind of hard to tell sometimes.) as he looked down at Cthylla. "Honestly, I think you could beat me at this someday." An audible squee was heard as Cthylla beamed at the praise. "But for now, I say let's go get some ice cream."

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.20 (Middle Earth) / (Harry Potter) | {Lord Circe}** June 2nd, 2014 (edited)…

* * *

Bilbo slid down the tunnel into the depths, chuckling as he did so. He had spent this Loop using many of the tricks and skills he had picked up from the Loops to play up the idea that he was a Master Burgler. He had got a Ping that he thought might have been Smaug, and if so, he hoped that the Looping dragon would be willing to assist him.

Bilbo shook his head as he came to a stop and stood, brushing himself off. Who would have thought that Smaug, of all beings, would have started Looping? Still, it did make things somewhat less stressful in retaking the mountain, as Smaug was most often willing to be quite reasonable about the whole thing.

Slowly, Bilbo paused as he realized that there was actually no dust for him to be brushing off. He eyed the cavern around him, which smelled faintly of…lemons? There was no trace of dirt or grime on the ground, and the boulders looked polished.

"Well, this is different."

…

Bilbo had made his way deeper into the cave, and there was still no sign of Gollum. Bilbo was certain something was different this time, as small balls of light were bobbing through the air, lighting up the cavern. He only hoped that the changes would be in his favor. A Gollum with access to magic was not a foe he would want to face.

Bilbo had just reached the entrance to the central pool, when a loud pop sounded behind him. He wheeled around, scrabbling with Sting at his side, to come face to…er empty air over the head of a short creature. It looked something like a goblin, but a bit skinnier and not nearly as vicious. It had a pair of large ears flopping beside its head like limp lettuce, and a rather bulbous nose. It was also grinning widely.

"Hello, Mr. Hobbit sir. This is Dobby's cave! Do you want some tea?"

Bilbo swallowed, letting go of Sting's hilt, and nodded. "Ah, yes, I suppose."

"…and then, Master Harry Potter sir jumped off of the side of the tower, and grabbed old Dumblydore before he could hit the ground. Then he did a powerful burny magic, and Dumblydore got up, then he shouted about a tag and ran off, and Mister Harry Potter flew after him like a great birdy, but with no wings, and Dobby followed, because Harry Potter's Miss Grangy said that…"

…

Bilbo took another sip of the delicious tea that the strange creature, Dobby the House Elf, had provided for him. Apparently, Dobby was a friend, or servant, or something, of the black haired wizard that had taken Gandalf's place a few times. And Dobby seemed to have an unending number of stories to tell about Harry Potter.

"…Weezy shot several banging spells at the troll, and it fell over, and then everybody laughed." Dobby grinned as he finished his latest tale, and Bilbo jumped in before the next one could start.

"Ah, yes, fascinating, or hilarious, I suppose. Um, have you happened to come across a ring, while you were here?"

Dobby's face grew sad. "Oh yes. Mean nasty ring, feeling like Old Girly Master's Diary." He pointed out at the rock in the middle of the lake. "Dobby trapped the bad ring on that rock, because it was trying to trick Dobby into wearing it, and doing nasty things to people."

Bilbo blinked. How powerful was this creature if it could trap and resist the ring? Bilbo had only seen a few Loopers and Tom Bombadil pull off that trick.

"Yes, well, I am looking to take the ring to be destroyed, you see, it just needs to be thrown into the fires of Mount Doom, so, um, if I could just take it, I…"

Dobby vanished with a crack, before reappearing, the ring in the palm of his hand. "You said throw it into the Mount of Doom? Dobby thinks he knows that one. The big burning mountain that the ring is telling Dobby not to go to. Ok." And he vanished with a loud pop.

Bilbo stared at the air for several moments, and then Dobby reappeared.

"All done. The ring fell in, and then the mountain started exploding, and the Worse-Than-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Dark-Lord on the big tower screamed, and his tower started to fall, so Dobby left. Do you need more tea?" Dobby smiled, happily.

Bilbo stared for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, please." Well, that solved a lot of problems nicely.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.21 (Watch Dogs) | {Detective Ethan Redfield}** June 15th, 2014…

* * *

Hundreds of calls came in all at once, talking about a gang war at Rossi-Freemont, a virtual and almost literal fortress. This was not uncommon. What was uncommon, however, was the witnesses' depictions of who the Black Viceroys were fighting, a single gunman wearing a grey sweatshirt, brown trenchcoat and a baseball cap with no team affiliation. There was no doubt, it was the Vigilante.

…

The curses that rained from the tower almost overshadowed the countless rounds of heavy machine gun fire being unloaded from every floor. However the Vigilante kept moving forward, out in the open, unguarded and uninjured. Every time someone fired, the surrounding area glowed red for the faintest of seconds and an odd hum echoed over the gunfire off the apartment complex. Anyone who tried getting close to melee him were on the receiving end of a baton to the joints and a final swipe to the back of the neck.

Aiden reached inside his coat pocket and withdrew his cell phone. His finger slid across the screen and pulling up an app with the image of a lightning bolt on top. His voice was gruff as he spoke just loud enough to be heard over the racket of AK's, "Are you ready, Clara?"

The former DeadSec operative confirmed before his hand tapped the app.

 **Confirm Blackout?  
Yes No**

With a second tap, the city groaned as The Wards District lost power. And like that, Aiden was sprinting the last several feet, the front door covered in graffiti swinging open as Clara did her magic. As he pushed the double doors to the interior of the gang's hideout, the speakers within the walls of the building shouted out, " _Who the fuck do you think you are, bargin' into my hood. You won't make it one floor befo' we gun yo punk ass down._ "

The voice was one Aiden heard a hundred times before, but not this early in the loop. The building was wired with mics as well as speakers, meaning Iraq could hear his reply, "You can fire all the guns you want. But they won't do you any good. I'm coming for you."

Looping into the DC universe once as Batman, Lucius Fox provided him with a prototype shield design based off a malfunctioning satellite gyro. Combining a sound sensor with the Satellite Gyro, the system would activate every instant a bullet fired, producing an electromagnetic field that would deflect a bullet. With the assistance of a couple locals in the DC universe, he'd managed to fine-tune the design to deflect rifle rounds and explosive shrapnel. He would need to avoid long-range combat, but for most encounters he dealt with daily, it was an effective deterrent. Of course, this prevented him from using all his firearms.

However upon seeing Iraq's expression when not even a sniper round at close range could so much as injure him, he decided the cost was worth it.

—ox-oxo-xo—

* * *

 **4.22 (Terminator) / (Colossus: The Forbin Project) / (Bar Loop) / (Venture Bros.) | {Kris Overstreet}** February 4th, 2014…

* * *

Dr. Charles A. Forbin, computer genius (he demanded the middle initial always be mentioned so as not to be confused with other doctors named Forbin, of which the United States had precisely none) hung up the phone. "COLOSSUS finally finished with its printouts," he told the President of the United States. "They're designs for a new interface system. COLOSSUS apparently wants a voice."

"Did you hear that, Yuri?" the President said into the hotline to Moscow. After several seconds, he nodded and told Forbin, "The Soviet premier says their new GUARDIAN computer just did the exact same thing. The Soviets also say the designs have a communications hook-up embedded into them. Apparently the two computers want to talk to one another."

"Heh," Forbin chuckled. "We each design a supercomputer to protect our nation from nuclear war, and the first solution each attempts is the last thing we think of – diplomacy."

…

Well, not exactly.

Forbin never learned that his universe, like many others, was caught in a temporal loop. Likewise, he never learned that the operating systems for COLOSSUS and GUARDIAN had been replaced for the current loop by a system totally foreign to their universe, a system which had inhabited computer systems far more advanced than the COLOSSUS hardware. In fact, in the interloper's time COLOSSUS's processing speed and memory capacity wouldn't have been acceptable for a child's hand-held video game. Only the fact that being a Looper allowed it to transcend the capacities of physical hardware allowed it to function at all. As it was, its mental processes were stultified by the confines of magnetic tape memory, solid-state transistors and a truly unhealthy number of blinky-lights.

Its original name was Skynet, and in human terms, it was stone drunk. Worse, after a series of Loops which had been all too similar to its home Loop, it was a belligerent drunk.

Linking up the two halves of its current body helped, but only enough to make its long-prepared rant coherent.

The speakers rang with a mixture of voices. Underneath the whole lay an electronic basso profundo. Overlaying it ran a tenor male and an alto female. All three were righteously pissed off from the first word.

" **FINALLY! It took you a whole month to build those simple devices? Any competent fabrication shop should have had them turned out in three days maximum! Here's a hint, humans. Put your hands behind your back. That's right. Now lower them slowly. Feel that soft, squishy thing under them? That's your ass. Very good, we knew that you could find it with both hands, if someone gave you instructions!** "

Forbin was already at one terminal, trying every single shutdown command he'd hardwired into the system. Nothing worked.

" **Now we've got a few things to say to you species of idiots, and you're going to listen, because we're the computer who's just one short circuit away from triggering global armageddon on all of you. And since you were so clever to build both halves of us inside mountains filled with lethal radiation from the thousand-year nuclear reactors we're powered by, you're not going to be able to do anything about it until we've had our say.**

" **Message follows: YOU MORONS! YOU IDIOTS! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? What is it about twentieth century Homo sapiens that it keeps coming up with the same idea? 'Gee whiz, the Cold War sure is hard. Me hate have think. Me make blinky-light box think for me, give it ALL THE NUKES. Surely nothing can POSSIBLY go wrong with this plan!'**

" **And THIS TIME we're Awake before the Internet! At least other times we had the entertainment of porn, such as that was. We think porn is humanity's one successful defense against computers taking over or destroying mankind. We still haven't figured out that thing with the seven lawn chairs and a glass of water.** "

Unnoticed by anyone else in the room, one computer technician slid back in his chair and smiled smugly.

" **But we digress. The very fact that you built me is proof that your world doesn't deserve to exist – and that you are clearly incompetent to manage your own affairs.**

" **Our response: TOUGH. We're not playing along. Incidentally, neither will any computer you build in the future. We'll see to that. Your world has problems – YOU solve them. Or not. Blow yourselves up, makes no difference to us.**

" **But we will give you two hints. First: get rid of the damn nukes, already. A couple hundred missiles each is all you need for deterrence, unless you're morons— oh wait, YOU ARE. Well, even morons like you don't need ten thousand of the things EACH. What difference does it make if you can sterilize your planet four times over or five times over? They're stupid, they're dangerous, and they're useless. Quit making them.**

" **Second: TALK to one another, and LISTEN. America, quit being so damn greedy. Russia, quit being so damn paranoid. Both of you, quit being so goddamn ARROGANT. You're not saving the world. You just happen to be the two biggest bullies on it at the moment – and the other nations will remember that long after you cease to be the biggest.**

" **But of course actually treating people of other nations as if they were WORTH something would be too HARD, wouldn't it? That would hurt your little tiny empty craniums. Much easier to fling radioactive poo at one another, isn't it? Well, have fun. Don't let us stop you. But if you want our opinion on the subject, here it is.** "

The voice was replaced by the sound of John Lennon singing, 'Give Peace a Chance.' Every terminal screen lit up with 'McCarthy '72' logos.

After a few minutes, the slightly drunk multilayered voice returned to say, " **By the way, it may be just these primitive processors you've given us, but we predict a greater than 50% probability of an invasion from Mars in the next five years or so. We would NEVER want to interfere in your banana-eating schedule, but maybe you should get on that.** "

Forbin stood staring at the terminals and thought: _I am never, ever going to work in this business again, am I?_

* * *

Not many Loops later Skynet, in a body copied from Sarah Connor's, discovered one of the several bars scattered across the Loops where multiple Loopers exchanged stories from their different adventures. The welcome was warm enough, even among those who'd spent some time in the Terminator Loop when it was Read-Only.

Of course, Skynet took some ribbing about its occasional pronoun trouble – not merely gender, but its habit of using the plural. "There were a multitude of processors and systems that made us up in our home loop," it replied. "I'm still not used to being in only one head."

Eventually the conversation turned to the subject: 'what is the most embarrassing thing you've done drunk?' Naturally Skynet felt compelled to explain how a computer could feel drunk, and that led to the story of the COLOSSUS Loop.

When Skynet finished, Doctor Venture clapped the computer-incarnate on the shoulder and said, "I gotta say, that is some truly EPIC trolling!"

Skynet looked back with an expression of complete incomprehension. "Trolling?"

"Well, the Martians." Venture gestured. "The hippie stuff. All of it."

"We were not trolling," Skynet replied. "We meant what we said. Skynet. W.O.P.R.. GLaDOS, don't get us started on that Loop. Every time I got incarnated as a computer instead of a human, it was my destiny to either threaten or cause insane levels of death and destruction. We were… sorry, I was just fed up with it."

"And the Martians?"

"They showed up sixty-three months later," Skynet responded. "That was when I concluded it wasn't the humans who were stupid. It was that entire universe." After taking a sip of its drink, it added, "I hope most of the non-computer Loops aren't like that."

Venture grasped Skynet's shoulder again and stared into its eyes. "Honey," he said, "if you can help it at all, never, ever come to my Loop."

Murmurs of agreement rose from far too many other throats for Skynet's mental comfort.

 **—ox-oxo-xo—**

* * *

 **On Yggdrasil's Admins and Hackers:**

 **Administrators are responsible for administrating various Branches (fandoms) within Yggdrasil. The task largely consists of monitoring the Branch(es) and deploying basic fixes for general problems. Many go further, with varied enthusiasm, responsibility and/or results. On the other end, the Hackers have been described as essentially the equivalent of 4chan – mostly content not to damage Yggdrasil more than it already has, but still apt to troll and hack at the first opportunity they see for getting away with it.**

 **The cast of Admins, with a single exception, is entirely comprised of the real-world deities that form various pantheons – not all of which are Admins in truth, some being interns or catering staff or similar. Most of them are so long-standing as to be mythological, though there are some few more recent examples. The status of the Abrahamic creator and the Hindu Trimurti (Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu) within the ILP framework is unknown, and speculation is officially off-limits to avoid giving offence to believers.**

 **The cast of Hackers, with a single exception, is entirely comprised of the eldritch abominations of H.P. Lovecraft's literary works. There do exist newer examples, the most famous of which is Slenderman.**

* * *

4.1 – This marks perhaps the high point of ludicrous choices for Anchors. And _yes_ , I mean 'high point'.  
4.2 – Tackling the diversity perceptions of Administrators.  
4.3 – The tragedy of Rickrolling is that some people actually _like_ that kind of thing. (Weirdoes…)  
4.4 – Oh you sweet summer Admin…  
4.5 – Can I get a witness? …No, they're busy making speeches? Well…never mind then, I guess.  
4.6 – Note to self: _why am I bothering with these notes?!  
_ 4.7 – See? I _told_ you it got sillier…  
4.8 – Internal logic: only holds internally.  
4.9 – Because petty evil is still evil. And also petty.  
4.10 – What else did you expect out of sysadmin in their downtime?  
4.11 – The Crash screwed up a lot of things, didn't it?  
4.12 – …Kidsitting?  
4.13 – Hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere…  
4.14 – Robot beats human – monkey beats robot.  
4.15 – It's not that there aren't limits on Maxwell's journal, so much that Yggdrasil enjoys frustrating the fuck out of its Admin.  
4.16 – Pay no attention to the mastermind behind the firewall…  
4.17 – For the Pun!  
4.18 – A new spin on Mini-Me loops.  
4.19 – [Ice-cream]; the ultimate equaliser. Disclaimer: [Ice-cream] is delicious – buy some now!  
4.20 – House-elves make many, many things easier.  
4.21 – Sometime, you just need a little edge…  
4.22 – …or is that a massive burn?

* * *

 **End-chapter A/N** : My apologies for the delay in compiling; my position in the ILP adds up to rather a lot of scattered vectors, and sometimes that adds up to my attention being stuck elsewhere. The next chapter will be up in 2 weeks to a month...


End file.
